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This dataset contains the boundaries of cities ("CITIES"), greater cities ("GREATER_CITIES") and functional urban areas ("FUA") defined according to the EC-OECD city definition. It is used for the Eurostat Urban Audit data collection.

Downloads data from the aggregated GISCO Urban Audit file. To download single-unit Urban Audit files, use gisco_get_unit_urban_audit().

Usage

gisco_get_urban_audit(
  year = 2024,
  epsg = 4326,
  cache = TRUE,
  update_cache = FALSE,
  cache_dir = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE,
  spatialtype = c("RG", "LB"),
  country = NULL,
  level = c("all", "CITIES", "FUA", "GREATER_CITIES", "CITY", "KERN", "LUZ"),
  ext = "gpkg"
)

Source

GISCO Urban Audit distribution API: https://gisco-services.ec.europa.eu/distribution/v2/urau/.

Arguments

year

A character string or numeric value with the release year of the file. One of "2024", "2021", "2020", "2018", "2014", "2004", "2001" .

epsg

A character string or numeric value with the coordinate reference system as a 4-digit EPSG code. One of:

cache

A logical value indicating whether to cache results. Defaults to TRUE. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().

update_cache

A logical value indicating whether to refresh the cached file. Defaults to FALSE. When set to TRUE, it forces a new download.

cache_dir

A character string with a path to a cache directory. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().

verbose

A logical value indicating whether to display informational messages.

spatialtype

A character string with the type of geometry to return. Options available are:

  • "RG": Regions - MULTIPOLYGON/POLYGON object.

  • "LB": Labels - POINT object.

country

A character vector of country codes. It can be either a vector of country names, a vector of ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes or a vector of Eurostat country codes. See also countrycode::countrycode().

level

A character string with the Urban Audit level. Possible values are "all" (the default), which downloads the full dataset, "CITIES", "FUA" and, for versions prior to year = 2020, "GREATER_CITIES", "CITY", "KERN" or "LUZ".

ext

A character value with the extension of the file (default "gpkg"). One of "shp", "gpkg", "geojson" .

Value

A sf object.

Details

For more information, see: Eurostat - Statistics Explained.

Cities are defined at several conceptual levels:

  • The core city ("CITIES"), using an administrative definition.

  • The Functional Urban Area/Large Urban Zone ("FUA"), approximating the functional urban region. Coverage includes the EU, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The dataset includes polygon features, point features and a related attribute table which can be joined on the URAU code field.

The "URAU_CATG" field defines the Urban Audit category:

  • "C" = City.

  • "F" = Functional urban area service type.

See the GISCO statistical unit copyright provisions: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/statistical-units.

Note

Check the download and usage provisions in gisco_attributions().

See also

See gisco_bulk_download() to perform a bulk download of datasets.

See gisco_get_unit_urban_audit() to download single-unit files.

Statistical unit datasets: gisco_get_census(), gisco_get_coastal_lines(), gisco_get_lau(), gisco_get_nuts()

Examples

# \donttest{

cities <- gisco_get_urban_audit(year = 2024, level = "CITIES")

if (!is.null(cities)) {
  bcn <- cities[cities$URAU_NAME == "Barcelona", ]

  library(ggplot2)
  ggplot(bcn) +
    geom_sf()
}

# }