gisco_get_urban_audit: Urban Audit dataset

In giscoR: Download Map Data from GISCO API - Eurostat

Urban Audit dataset

Description

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

Please note that this function gets data from the aggregated GISCO Urban Audit file. If you prefer to download individual urban audit files, please use gisco_get_unit_urban_audit().

Usage

gisco_get_urban_audit(
  year = 2021,
  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"
)

Arguments

year	character string or number. Release year of the file. One of \Sexpr[stage=render,results=rd]{giscoR:::db_values("urban_audit", "year",TRUE)}.
epsg	character string or number. Projection of the map: 4-digit EPSG code. One of: "4326": WGS84. "3035": ETRS89 / ETRS-LAEA. "3857": Pseudo-Mercator.
cache	logical. Whether to do caching. Default is TRUE. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
update_cache	logical. Should the cached file be refreshed?. Default is FALSE. When set to TRUE it would force a new download.
cache_dir	character string. A path to a cache directory. See Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
verbose	logical. If TRUE displays informational messages.
spatialtype	character string. Type of geometry to be returned. Options available are: "RG": Regions - MULTIPOLYGON/POLYGON object. "LB": Labels - POINT object.
country	character vector of country codes. It could be either a vector of country names, a vector of ISO3 country codes or a vector of Eurostat country codes. See also countrycode::countrycode().
level	character string. Level of Urban Audit. Possible values "all" (the default), that would download the full dataset or "CITIES", "FUA", and (for versions prior to year = 2020) "GREATER_CITIES", "CITY", "KERN" or "LUZ".
ext	character. Extension of the file (default "gpkg"). One of \Sexpr[stage=render,results=rd]{giscoR:::db_values("urban_audit", "ext",TRUE)}.

Details

See more in Eurostat - Statistics Explained.

The 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. The coverage is the EU plus 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.

Value

A sf object.

Note

Please check the download and usage provisions on gisco_attributions().

Source

https://gisco-services.ec.europa.eu/distribution/v2/.

Copyright: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/administrative-units.

See Also

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

See gisco_get_unit_urban_audit() to download single files.

Other statistical units datasets: gisco_get_census(), gisco_get_coastal_lines(), gisco_get_lau(), gisco_get_nuts()

Examples

cities <- gisco_get_urban_audit(year = 2021, level = "CITIES")

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

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

giscoR documentation built on Dec. 10, 2025, 9:08 a.m.