The Parcel Layer — the Neighborhoods Instrument

St. Joseph County parcel layer (City of South Bend GIS, Land Records — Parcels_County), pulled whole and tested against the Census TIGERweb CDP polygon, November 2026

What it is: the measuring instrument the Neighborhoods leg built for itself, because no published record counts this place plat by plat. The county parcel layer was pulled whole over the ground in and around the CDP by envelope tiles — 14,135 parcels — and every parcel tested against the Census Bureau's TIGERweb polygon for the CDP (GEOID 1828800): 12,105 parcels stand inside. From that file come this section's plat families (1,419 distinct plat-name strings parsed in-CDP; 1,193 at six parcels or fewer, carried in aggregate at their documented size), the agricultural remainder the Farms leg measured (170 agricultural-class parcels, 4,058.2 acres, 28.7% of the place's parcel acres, the class glosses verified against the Indiana DLGF code list, 50 IAC 26, updated 12 June 2025), and every boundary verdict in Part Five that rests on the polygon.

Its standing, from this build's experience: the file is a tax-administration record, and the fragments say so: counts print as "the county file carries N parcels," never as original lot counts, and the method is stated in this section's own frame article. Two of this section's traps were found by testing and are printed so the next build inherits them: the LEGALDESCR trailing dates are assessor setup and replat years in the main, NOT plat recording dates — tested, and refused as chronology; and the MapServer times out on polygon-spatial-filter queries, so envelope tiles with a local polygon test is the working route. The pull itself taught the build's verification rule in miniature: an early run's console claimed 35,344 parcels while its file held 359 — the run was voided, the file deleted, and every banked count comes from the verified files only.

Where it fails: at the polygon's edge and in its own generalization. The CDP polygon used was generalized (maximum allowable offset 0.0002), so edge verdicts were cross-checked against the TAXDIST field — and the contested grounds (Bradford Shores, Farmington Hills) sit west of the line by whole streets, not by generalization error. The file also cannot say what a plat was meant to be: the Hills stand at 229 approved lots in the approval record and 87 parcels in the county file, and both numbers print, each as its own record's.

Sources:

2. St. Joseph County parcel layer and Census TIGERweb (CDP polygon, GEOID 1828800), read November 2026; Indiana DLGF property class code list (50 IAC 26, Code List 1).