Who's Responsible — NYC jurisdiction finder
New York City · prototype

Who is responsible to you?

Enter an address and ask a question. Every rule has a jurisdiction; “nationwide” is just a very large one. This finds the stack of bodies whose extent covers you and whose remit covers your question — and tells you how to reach each one.

Sent once to NYC Planning's GeoSearch to get a map point. Nothing else leaves your browser.
Plain language. Leave blank to see every body covering this address.
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Boundary layers0 of 9 loaded

Point-in-polygon runs in this page — no boundary data is ever requested from a server, so which districts you look up stays private. Nothing is bundled and nothing downloads automatically. Drag GeoJSON files onto the box below and they take effect immediately.

To load them on every visit instead, put the files in a boundaries/ folder next to this page along with a manifest.json mapping layer keys to filenames — for example {"cd":"community-districts.geojson","council":"city-council-districts.geojson"} — and serve the page over http. Without that manifest the page makes no requests at all.

Get each file from NYC Open Data: find the dataset, then Export → GeoJSON. Run them through mapshaper first — simplifying to around 10% typically drops a 5MB shoreline-detailed file under 300KB with no visible effect on which polygon a point lands in.

Drop .geojson files here, or

Three keys, not one. A jurisdiction question resolves on whichever of three things it actually depends on. A point answers anything drawn as an area — districts, precincts, zones. A parcel answers anything true of one building — violations, permits, individual landmark status, rent regulation. An activity answers anything true of what you're doing regardless of where — food handling, broadcasting, hiring. Most confusion about who governs you comes from asking one key a question that belongs to another.

How location resolves. The address goes once to NYC GeoSearch, a free keyless geocoder built on the city's Property Address Directory, which returns coordinates and — because PAD is the source — the parcel id in the same response. Both keys, one request. Everything after that happens in this page against GeoJSON you supply. The geocoder learns an address; it never learns what you were trying to find out.

Where to get the boundary files. All are on NYC Open Data; export each as GeoJSON. Verify the current dataset before downloading — DCP reissues these on a version cycle. BetaNYC's nyc-boundaries has a script that downloads and aggregates the whole set, which is the fastest path. Simplify with mapshaper before shipping; full-resolution files are several MB each and about 90% of that detail is shoreline you don't need.