Building on Britain

Just under 6% of the UK is built on. More than half the land is farmland and around a third of all land is natural (heath, moorland etc). You can discover how much of your local area is built on using the BBC's new interactive map.

How Much of Your Area is Built On uses new data on UK land use, which was derived from analyzing satellite imagery. Enter your location into the BBC's interactive and you can find out how much of your local area is natural, farmland, green urban or built on. A map of your area shows which parts fall into each of these four categories of land use. You are also shown the total percentage of land in your area which is given over to each of the four categories and how that compares to the national average.

While 6% of the UK is built upon only 3.6% of America is dedicated to urban areas. You can find out about American land use in Bloomberg's Here's How America Uses its Land.


If you live outside of the UK or the USA then you can use the OSM Landuse Landcover map to get an idea of the different percentages of land use on your area. This map uses OpenStreetMap data to map land-use and show the percentage of different types of land-use around the globe.

The OSM Landuse Landcover map uses contrasting colors to show how areas have been tagged in OpenStreetMap for land-use and land-cover. If you zoom in on a location on the map you can see how different areas have been tagged for land use and land cover. A dynamic pie chart also provides an overview of the percentages of different types of land use in the current map view.

Obviously the data on the map is only as accurate and complete as the data in OpenStreetMap.