Suburbs and Localities Data

The NZ Suburbs and Localities (Pilot) dataset describes the spatial extent and name of communities in urban areas (suburbs) and rural areas (localities) to help locate people and properties.  It is based on the NZ Localities dataset which is maintained by Fire and Emergency NZ.

At this stage,  NZ Localities continues to be maintained by Fire and Emergency NZ and published on the LINZ Data Service.  Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will establish a new dataset to replace NZ Localities in 2023.  NZ Localities will continue to be available for a period of six months to allow for the transition to NZ Suburbs and Localities.  Updates to both datasets will be limited to priority changes required by the Fire and Emergency Communications Centre during this transition.

While creating NZ Suburbs and Localities (Pilot), LINZ has taken the opportunity to restructure the data based on customer feedback.  Our intention is to make the suburbs and localities data easier to understand and use.

The key changes introduced in NZ Suburbs and Localities (Pilot) are:

All suburb and locality names are now held in a single field, to replace the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st order names
New Zealand Geographic Board official place names have been adopted, including macrons.
Additional name field, to hold alternative common or in-use names
Each name field has a corresponding ascii field to provide the names without macrons or other special characters
Territorial Authority has been added
Small lakes and tarns have been removed
A simple version of the data has been created to removed the related tables.
A complex version of the data has three related tables to provide a one to many relationship for Territorial Authority, Additional Names and Adjacent Names.  The complex version will be published once the data structure for the pilot has been confirmed
Please refer to the NZ Localities Data Migration Guidance for more information.

Your feedback

We welcome your feedback on NZ Suburbs and Localities (Pilot)

Are the changes to the NZ Suburbs and Localities (Pilot) dataset useful?
Have you identified any opportunities to improve NZ Suburbs and Localities (Pilot) ?
Any other feedback?
Please provide feedback via this short survey.

APIs and web services

This dataset is available via ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS REST services, as well as our standard APIs.
LDS APIs and OGC web services
ArcGIS Online map services