Montgomery County, MDThe Communities layer was created in 2009 to describe areas often referenced by denizens, as many areas of the County are not within an official municipality with city limits. The five Regional Services Center directors at the time worked with DTS-GIS (now TEBS) staff to create geographic areas with which citizens identify, since some of the general place names such as "Bethesda" and "Silver Spring" can cover large swaths of the County and are not specific enough for certain purposes. At first, they looked at existing layers such as Census Designated Places, Zip Codes, and municipalities, but the directors found that these other layers either didn't cover the entire County or else didn't really represent the locations to which citizens commonly refer. DTS-GIS staff prepared paper maps for the directors so they could use existing geographic features as a guide as they marked areas within their own service regions. The polygons in this layer are the result of that effort. Can be downloaded from the GIS Data Portal here .ArcGIS FeatureLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/e895ac8c825d4e9794690ded4b0c2089_0engMontgomery County GIS Open DataPublicCommunities [Maryland--Montgomery County]Web servicesMaryland--Montgomery CountyMarylandLast Modified: 2025-05-06