# Functional Urban Area (FUA) boundaries, Dec. 2020

This metadata refers to the Functional Urban Area (FUA) boundaries, used within the context of Urban Atlas 2012 and 2018 for the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. The dataset contains a total of 788 FUA over EEA38 (with the exception of Liechtenstein) and the United Kingdom. 

A FUA consists of a city and its commuting zone. Functional urban areas therefore consist of a densely inhabited city and a less densely populated commuting zone whose labour market is highly integrated with the city (OECD, 2012). Formerly known as larger urban zone (LUZ). See Dijkstra et al (2019) for detailed methodology summarizing the EU-OECD definition (the document is provided with the dataset). 

The main sources for this dataset are: 
For EU-27 and the UK, Switzerland, and Iceland: provided by DG Regio to EEA in autumn 2017 (originated in Member States and collected originally by Eurostat).

For West Balkans the input data collected and used for delineating a city were:
- Urban centres provided by EEA / DG REGIO
- GEOSTAT 2011 grid dataset produced by Eurostat as population density grid data
- Local administrative units at the most detailed level

For Türkiye the input data collected and used for delineating a city were:
- Urban centres provided by EEA / DG REGIO
- LandScan 2010 © UT BATTELLE, LLC as population density grid data
- Turkish Districts (LAU1 equivalent) as the most detailed level of administrative units made available by the national authorities through the Statistical portal or CORDA platform

The task was conducted during the first quarter of 2017 and the results validated by EEA and DG REGIO by the end of March. 107 Functional Urban Areas have been defined over this geographical extension.https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/geonetwork/srv/api/records/b00ec941-c4dd-4673-91ea-2c8b5145892d


[More information](https://sdi.eea.europa.eu/catalogue/srv/api/records/b00ec941-c4dd-4673-91ea-2c8b5145892d)
    