Urban Morphological Zone (2012) within cities included in Urban Audit 2011-2014, Jan. 2019

This vector dataset presents the Urban Morphological Zones (UMZ) for reference year 2012 clipped by the city administrative boundaries from Urban Audit 2011-2014 from Eurostat. A UMZ is defined as ‘a set of urban areas laying less than 200 m apart’. Those urban areas are defined with land cover classes contributing to the urban tissue and function. The UMZ 2012 dataset has been derived from the Copernicus Urban Atlas 2012 by using urban core classes (residential, industrial and commercial, green urban areas) and adding enlarged core classes if they fulfil certain neighbourhood conditions of the core classes. The UMZ is a reference unit for city morphology as the best approximation of the ‘real’ city form, which often does not correspond to the administrative delineation. The UMZ more accurately reflects the physical shape of cities compared to the administrative boundaries.