French PLU & Urban Zoning Lookup (Géoportail de l'Urbanisme)

Turn a French address, cadastral parcel or commune code into the urban-planning rules that actually apply to it: the PLU zone, its full label, the graphic prescriptions that constrain building, the public easements (servitudes d'utilité publique), and a direct link to the written règlement — often down to the exact page.

Checking one plot by hand on the Géoportail de l'Urbanisme takes several minutes of panning, clicking and PDF hunting. This Actor does it in about a second per location, for a list of any size, and returns a flat table you can drop into a spreadsheet, a CRM or a valuation model.

Who this is for

• Diagnostiqueurs and notaires preparing a sale file who need the zone and the easements on record.
• Developers, land hunters and architects screening plots for feasibility before spending on a survey.
• Utility, telecom and civil-engineering firms checking protected perimeters along a route.
• Estate agencies and proptech products enriching a portfolio with planning context.
• Researchers and analysts mapping the zoning of a whole commune in one call.

What you get for each location

Field	What it tells you
zoneCode / zoneLabel	The PLU zone (UA, AUc, N, A…) and its official wording
zoneFamily	U, AU, A or N — urban, to-be-urbanised, agricultural, natural
regulationFileName / regulationUrl	The written règlement, sometimes anchored to the exact page
documentType / documentId	PLU, PLUi, POS, carte communale or PSMV for protected sectors, with its approval date
prescriptions	Protected hedges and trees, alignments, reserved emplacements, protected frontage
easements	Historic-monument perimeters, gas and power lines, airport noise, water catchment
parcelId / parcelAreaSqm	Cadastral identity and surface, when you query by parcel
gpuViewerUrl	A deep link that opens the official map at that exact point

Four ways to ask

Addresses — free text, geocoded against the official BAN address base, with the match score returned so you can spot a weak match:

12 rue de la République, 84000 Avignon

Cadastral parcels — the unit that matters for permits and land deals. Both forms work:

84141,AW,1
84141000AW0001

Coordinates — longitude,latitude in WGS84, longitude first, as in GeoJSON:

4.8055,43.9493

INSEE commune codes — returns every zoning polygon of the territory instead of a single point:

84141

An honest note on coverage

Not every square metre of France carries a PLU zone, and the Actor says so rather than returning a silent blank. When no polygon covers a point, zoningStatus is no-zone-at-this-point and zoningNote explains the likely reason: a protected sector under a separate PSMV plan, public land left outside the zoning, a commune under national rules (RNU), or a gap in what the commune has uploaded. Paris's Marais, for example, comes back as a PSMV with zone US, while Avignon intra-muros comes back with no polygon at all — both are correct answers, and both are worth knowing before you quote a rule.

Pricing

You pay per location successfully resolved. Failed lookups — an address the BAN cannot match, a parcel that does not exist — are returned with an explanatory error and are not charged.

Data sources and licence

Everything comes from French public-sector open data, queried live so the answer reflects what is in force today:

• Géoportail de l'Urbanisme via the IGN APIcarto GPU module — zoning, prescriptions, easements, planning documents
• IGN APIcarto cadastre module — parcel outlines and areas
• Base Adresse Nationale (BAN) — address geocoding

These are published under the Licence Ouverte / Etalab. The Actor reads no personal data and requires no credentials.

Frequently asked

Does it return the full text of the règlement? It returns the file name and the link, with the page anchor where the source provides one. The PDFs stay on the commune's or the Géoportail's servers.

How fresh is the data? It is read live from the API on every run. lastUpdatedOnGpu tells you when the commune last published, and documentId carries the approval date, so you can tell a 2013 plan from a 2026 one at a glance.

Can I map an entire commune? Yes — pass the INSEE code. Avignon returns 142 zones and over 3,000 prescriptions in a single row.

Does it work in Corsica and the DOM? Corsican codes such as 2A004 work. Overseas coverage follows whatever the Géoportail publishes.