REGIOgis
Urban Land Use: lessons
from the Urban Atlas
Lewis Dijkstra
Deputy Head of the Analysis Unit
European Commission – DG Regional Policy
[email protected]
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REGIOgis
Overview
• New grid based definitions
– Urban-rural regional typology: Urban clusters
– Degree of urbanisation
– Cities and hinterland: High-density clusters and
commuting zones
• Measuring urban land use
– CORINE
– Soil sealing
– Urban Atlas
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REGIOgis
A new urban-rural regional typology
• Classifying EU NUTS3 regions
• A variant of the OECD methodology
• Aiming to provide a consistent basis for describing urban,
intermediate and rural regions in various Commission
reports and publications
• Developed by:
–
–
–
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DG Agriculture and Rural Development
DG Regional Policy
Eurostat
DG Joint Research Centre
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Why a new typology?
• Distortions using the OECD methodology at
NUTS3 level
– Large variation in area of local administrative units
(LAU2)
– Large variation in area of NUTS3 regions
– Some city centres separated from surroundings, at
NUTS3 level
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REGIOgis
The new typology: local level
• Units: 1 km² grid cells
• Population grid: registered population when
available, otherwise disaggregation grid (JRC)
• Identify population living in urban areas:
– Selection of grid cells with density > 300 inh./km²
– Only groups of grid cells, representing a total
population of > 5000 inhabitants
– Contiguity is evaluated including diagonals
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What is degree of urbanisation?
• Classification of all LAU2s into three categories:
– Thinly populated
– Intermediate density
– Densely populated
• It is used primarily in the Labour Force Survey
(LFS), but also in other surveys such as Survey
on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) and IT
• It is based on LAU2 density and contiguity
• In use for 20 years
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REGIOgis
Why a revision?
• Distortions due to the large variation in area of
local administrative units (LAU2)
• Revised urban-rural typology is based on a grid
based definition of rural areas which is more
reliable than OECD or LFS approach
• Harmonising spatial concepts
– Rural (OECD) and thinly populated areas (LFS)
– Densely populated areas (LFS) and cities (UA)
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REGIOgis
Previously: 3 conflicting definitions
Urban-Rural
Typology
Rural LAU2
Degree of
urbanisation
≠
Urban Audit
Thinly populated
Intermediate density
Densely populated ≠
Cities
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New Proposal: Harmonised definition
based on population grid
Revised Degree of urbanisaton
Thinly populated  Rural LAU2
Intermediate density
Densely populated  Urban Audit Cities
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New Proposal: 3 Criteria 3 Classes
Type of Area
Criteria
Thinly populated
> 50% population in rural grid cells
Intermediate
density
<50% population in rural grid cells and
<50% population in high-density grid cells
Densely
populated
> 50% population in high-density grid cells
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REGIOgis
Definitions
• Rural grid cells = cells outside urban clusters
• Urban clusters = contiguous (including diagonals)
cells with a density of at least 300 inhab/km2 and
a minimum of 5 000 inhabitants
• High-density clusters = contiguous (without
diagonals and with gap filling) cells with a density
of at least 1500 inhab/km2 and a minimum of
50 000 inhabitants
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REGIOgis
Population grid
• Units: 1 km² grid cells (future reference for all
population grids)
• Registered population in NO, CH, HR, AT, FI,
SE, DK and NL
• Elsewhere disaggregation grid v5 (JRC)
• FR is creating a real 1 km2 population grid
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City and hinterland
definition
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Why a new definition?
• No harmonised European definition of a city and
its functional area existed
• Use the same criteria as the degree of
urbanisation
• Uses commuting analysis to define commuting
zone
• Consider poly-centricity by checking for
connected centres
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REGIOgis
City definition
• A city consists of one or more municipalities
(local administrative unit level 2 LAU2).
• At least half of the city residents live in an urban
centre (i.e. a cluster of high-density grid cells with
the gaps filled)
• An urban centre has at least 50 000 inhabitants.
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City definition
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Hinterland definition
• If 15% of employed persons living in one city
work in another city, these cities are combined
into a single destination (polycentric)
• All municipalities with at least 15% of their
employed residents working in a city are
identified
• Municipalities surrounded by a single functional
area are included and non-contiguous
municipalities are dropped
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Hinterland definition
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Urban Land Use
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Goal and obstacles
• Accurately measure urban land use, especially at
the urban fringe
• CORINE is designed to mainly measure
agricultural uses, coarse resolution and does not
identify low-density developed (i.e. below 50% of
soil sealing)
• Soil sealing, high resolution and measures all
levels of sealing, but no land use info
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REGIOgis
The Urban Atlas
• Designed to measure urban land use at high
resolution and at low levels of soil sealing
• Providing harmonised land cover/land use maps
according to a common classification
• Covering 305 major European agglomerations,
based on Urban Audit’s Larger Urban Zones
• Imagery reference year: 2006 (+/- 1 year)
• Project duration: 2009-2011
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REGIOgis
Main features
• Thematic classes based on CORINE Land Cover
nomenclature
• But more specific for built-up areas, and less
specific outside urban areas
• Geometric resolution of 1:10,000
• Minimum mapping unit of 0.25 ha in urban areas,
1 ha in other areas
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CORINE Land Cover
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Urban Atlas
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SPOT / ALOS images
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Production
• Mix of automatic classification and photointerpretation
• Various data sources used, depending on
thematic classes
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Thematic classes
• Residential areas: use of soil sealing layer to
distinguish between density classes
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Thematic classes
• Non-residential urban areas
• Detailed transport network layer (COTS)
• Local maps as auxiliary source of information
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Thematic classes
• Other classes
• Less thematic detail for agricultural, natural and
forest areas (and MMU 1 ha)
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Dissemination
• Georeferenced layers are freely available
• Data download:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-andmaps/data/urban-atlas
• Map viewer:
http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/map/UrbanAtlas
beta/
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REGIOgis
Derived indicators
• Can be exploited at the level of Urban Audit
units:
– Larger Urban Zone (LUZ), kernel, city, sub-city
districts (SCD)
• Land cover/use surface breakdown
• Green urban areas per inhabitant
• A sprawl index (ESPON project): www.espon.eu
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The future of the Urban Atlas
• Repeat Urban Atlas in order to create a detailed dynamic
view on urban land cover/use
• Coherence with other data collection projects is important
– Census 2011
– Urban Audit
• Consequences
– Define imagery acquisition requirements (2011 +/- year)
– Update methodology, including change detection, to be
determined
– Ensure compatibility with revised Urban Audit following new
harmonised definition
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