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I got this question: How can you plot a map of the UK with ggplot2?

The answer is that you need to read a GeoJSON or equivalent file with the sf package and then use the geom_sf() function from ggplot2.

My apologies if my online search wasn’t good but all search engines in Canada became worse after Bill C-18 was passed. I found this maintained by Martin Chorley, I thought the data reading could be simplified, and so I started a small data package.

You can install the development version of ukmaps like so to install v0.0.1:

remotes::install_github("pachadotdev/ukmaps")

And here is a simple example of how to use it with dplyr and ggplot2:

library(ukmaps)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)

london_areas <- c(
  "City of London", "Barking and Dagenham", "Barnet", "Bexley", "Brent", "Bromley",
  "Camden", "Croydon", "Ealing", "Enfield", "Greenwich", "Hackney", "Hammersmith and Fulham",
  "Haringey", "Harrow", "Havering", "Hillingdon", "Hounslow", "Islington",
  "Kensington and Chelsea", "Kingston upon Thames", "Lambeth", "Lewisham", "Merton",
  "Newham", "Redbridge", "Richmond upon Thames", "Southwark", "Sutton",
  "Tower Hamlets", "Waltham Forest", "Wandsworth", "Westminster"
)

d <- administrative %>%
  filter(country == "England") %>%
  mutate(is_london = if_else(area_name %in% london_areas, "Yes", "No"))

pal <- c("#165976", "#d04e66")

ggplot(d) + 
  geom_sf(aes(fill = is_london, geometry = geometry), color = "white") +
  scale_fill_manual(values = pal, name = "Is this an administrative area of London?") +
  labs(title = "Map of England with Administrative Boundaries") +
  theme_minimal(base_size = 13)

I will improve the datasets soon to allow filtering by city and more.

I hope this is useful 🙂