Urban areas are considered negatively when assessing the natural amenity value of a county. Therefore, counties with the smallest percentage of land classified as urban have the highest liveability score. Leitrim has only 0.6% of the county area classified as urban and is assigned a liveability score of 50. At the other extreme, more than 35% of the land in county Dublin is considered urban and it is assigned a liveability score of zero. Louth and Kildare are the next most urbanised counties with 5.7 and 4.7% urban areas. The remaining 23 counties all have less than 3% of their land allocated as urban and as a result score highly.
| Rank | County | % Area | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leitrim | 0.6 | 50 |
| 2 | Mayo | 0.8 | 50 |
2 | Roscommon | 0.8 | 50 |
2 | Kerry | 0.8 | 50 |
| 5 | Longford | 1.0 | 49 |
| 6 | Galway | 1.1 | 49 |
6 | Cavan | 1.1 | 49 |
| 8 | Sligo | 1.2 | 49 |
8 | Tipperary | 1.2 | 49 |
| 10 | Donegal | 1.3 | 49 |
| 11 | Monaghan | 1.4 | 49 |
11 | Clare | 1.4 | 49 |
11 | Kilkenny | 1.4 | 49 |
| 14 | Offaly | 1.5 | 49 |
| 15 | Laois | 1.6 | 49 |
| 16 | Westmeath | 1.8 | 48 |
| 17 | Waterford | 2.1 | 48 |
17 | Wexford | 2.1 | 48 |
| 19 | Cork | 2.2 | 48 |
| 20 | Limerick | 2.3 | 48 |
20 | Carlow | 2.3 | 48 |
| 22 | Wicklow | 2.5 | 47 |
| 23 | Meath | 2.7 | 47 |
| 24 | Kildare | 4.7 | 44 |
| 25 | Louth | 5.7 | 43 |
| 26 | Dublin | 35.4 | 0 |
Methodology
We classified urban area using the CORINE Land Cover data set. CORINE is a European programme which uses satellite imagery to generate spatial data on landuse and landcover in Ireland. We defined urban area as any area classified in the following categories in the 2018 CORINE dataset: continuous and discontinuous urban fabric, industrial or commercial units, road and rail networks and associated land, port areas, airports, mineral extraction sites, dump sites, and construction sites.
More information on CORINE can be found here.