Municipalities of a region

Search boundaries inside another boundary: here all municipalities (admin_level 8) inside a Swiss canton. Regions are selected by their ISO 3166-2 code.

The query

[out:json][timeout:25];
area["ISO3166-2"="CH-ZG"]->.zug;
rel["boundary"="administrative"]["admin_level"="8"](area.zug);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. area["ISO3166-2"="CH-ZG"] is the canton of Zug. Regions in every country have such codes.
2. A relation is “in” the area when part of it is, so neighbouring municipalities that touch the border may appear. Filter them with (if: …) or check is_in if needed.

Variations

• Districts or counties instead: change the admin_level (the levels differ by country).

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.