Green areas - FUAs

This dataset provides an indicator of the availability of green areas in urban centres of Functional Urban Areas (FUAs).

Data sources and methodology

Green areas are estimated from the WorldCover global dataset and are defined as the sum of the following land cover classes: trees, shrubland and grassland. The indicators related to green areas are the share of green areas (in % of the total area) and green areas per capita (in m2 per capita). WorldCover is used as it provides harmonised, globally consistent coverage at very fine spatial resolution (10 m), enabling the production of comparable subnational indicators on land cover. To ensure comparability across FUAs, only urban centres as defined by the degree of urbanisation are considered.

These estimates may differ from official subnational land cover statistics due to differences in methodologies, such as top down remote-sensing based estimation versus bottom up cadastral or administrative data, along with differences in satellite imagery sources, spatial resolution, and model accuracy used to detect and classify land cover types.

Defining FUAs and cities

The OECD, in cooperation with the EU, has developed a harmonised definition of functional urban areas (FUAs) to capture the economic and functional reach of cities based on daily commuting patterns (OECD, 2012). FUAs consist of:

1. A city – defined by urban centres in the degree of urbanisation, adapted to the closest local administrative units to define a city.


2. A commuting zone – including all local areas where at least 15% of employed residents work in the city.

The delineation process includes:

• Assigning municipalities surrounded by a single FUA to that FUA.


• Excluding non-contiguous municipalities.

The definition identifies 1 285 FUAs and 1 402 cities in all OECD member countries except Costa Rica and three accession countries.

Cite this dataset

OECD Regions, cities and local areas database (Green areas - FUAs), http://oe.cd/geostats

Further information

• OECD Local Data Portal


• OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance

For questions and/or comments, please email [email protected]