DuckDB

DuckDB is powerful analytics tool that allows you to query remote files and download only the data you want. You'll need to install at least DuckDB 1.1.0, which supports reading and writing geoparquet.

Installation

Install DuckDB. You'll need extensions to work with spatial data in the cloud. Run the following commands in the DuckDB command line:

1. INSTALL SPATIAL; to install the duckdb_spatial extension.
2. INSTALL httpfs; or INSTALL azure; to read from either Amazon S3 (httpfs) or Microsoft Azure Blob Storage (azure).

Downloading Overture Data

These SQL queries will access Overture data in the cloud and download only the attributes that you request.

Places

Download all pizza restaurants in New York City as a GeoJSON file.

LOAD spatial; -- noqa

SET s3_region='us-west-2';

COPY(                                       -- COPY <query> TO <output> saves the results to disk.
    SELECT
       id,
       names.primary as name,
       confidence AS confidence,
       CAST(socials AS JSON) as socials,    -- Ensure each attribute can be serialized to JSON
       geometry                             -- DuckDB understands this to be a geometry type
    FROM read_parquet('s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2025-04-23.0/theme=places/type=place/*', filename=true, hive_partitioning=1)
    WHERE categories.primary = 'pizza_restaurant'
    AND bbox.xmin BETWEEN -75 AND -73       -- Only use the bbox min values
    AND bbox.ymin BETWEEN 40 AND 41         -- because they are point geometries.

) TO 'nyc_pizza.geojson' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'GeoJSON');

See the places schema to learn more about each attribute or the common schema concepts to better understand names.primary from names.common.

Buildings

Access Overture buildings data hosted on Azure to download named buildings around Detroit, Michigan. Saves as newline-delimited GeoJSON.

LOAD spatial; --noqa
SET azure_storage_connection_string = 'DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=overturemapswestus2;AccountKey=;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net';

COPY(
  SELECT
    id,
    names.primary as primary_name,
    height,
    geometry   -- DuckDB v.1.1.0 will autoload this as a `geometry` type
  FROM read_parquet('azure://release/2025-04-23.0/theme=buildings/type=building/*', filename=true, hive_partitioning=1)
  WHERE names.primary IS NOT NULL
  AND bbox.xmin BETWEEN -84.36 AND -82.42
  AND bbox.ymin BETWEEN 41.71 AND 43.33
  LIMIT 100
) TO 'detroit_buildings.geojsonseq' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'GeoJSONSeq');

Roads

Download roads in Paris around the Arc de Triomphe and save as GeoJSON.

LOAD spatial; -- noqa

SET s3_region='us-west-2';

COPY(
    SELECT
       id,
       names.primary as name,
       class,
       geometry   -- DuckDB v.1.1.0 will autoload this as a `geometry` type
    FROM read_parquet('s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2025-04-23.0/theme=transportation/type=segment/*', filename=true, hive_partitioning=1)
    WHERE bbox.xmin > 2.276
      AND bbox.ymin > 48.865
      AND bbox.xmax < 2.314
      AND bbox.ymax < 48.882
) TO 'paris_roads.geojson' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'GeoJSON');

Mountains

Download mountain peaks in Oregon, USA from the base theme, convert the elevation attribute to feet, and save the result as a GeoJSON file.

LOAD spatial; -- noqa

SET s3_region='us-west-2';

COPY(
    SELECT
       id,
       names.primary as name,
       CAST(elevation * 3.28084 AS INT) AS elevation_ft,
       geometry -- DuckDB v.1.1.0 will autoload this as a `geometry` type
    FROM read_parquet('s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2025-04-23.0/theme=base/type=land/*', filename=true, hive_partitioning=1)
    WHERE subtype = 'physical' AND class IN ('peak','volcano') AND elevation IS NOT NULL
    AND bbox.xmin BETWEEN -124.71 AND -116.47
    AND bbox.ymin BETWEEN 41.99 AND 46.30
) TO 'oregon_peaks.geojson'
WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'GeoJSON');

Counties

County-level geometries for Pennsylvania from the divisions theme and outputs a GeoPackage.

LOAD spatial; -- noqa
SET s3_region='us-west-2';

COPY(
    SELECT
        id,
        division_id,
        names.primary,
        geometry  -- DuckDB v.1.1.0 will autoload this as a `geometry` type
        FROM
            read_parquet('s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2025-04-23.0/theme=divisions/type=division_area/*', hive_partitioning=1)
        WHERE
            subtype = 'county'
            AND country = 'US'
            AND region = 'US-PA'
) TO 'pennsylvania_counties.gpkg' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'GPKG');

As GeoParquet

DuckDB v1.1.0 supports reading and writing GeoParquet directly. It recognizes the geometry type and will write the appropriate metadata.

LOAD spatial; -- noqa

COPY(
  SELECT
    *
  FROM read_parquet('s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2025-04-23.0/theme=places/type=place/*')
  LIMIT 100000
) TO 'places.parquet';

DuckDB recognizes the input as geoparquet and will automatically cast the geometry column to a GEOMETRY type. The COPY command writes a parquet file of 100,000 places named places.parquet with the appropriate geoparquet metadata.

---

tip

To download the data as shapefile, replace the last line of any of the above queries:

) TO 'overture_data.shp' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'ESRI Shapefile');

or as a geopackage:

) TO 'overture_data.gpkg' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'GPKG');

The DuckDB Spatial extension supports more than 50 geospatial file formats.

You can also use DuckDB to loop over the Parquet files in a directory and convert the data to a spatial format of your choice. The spatial extension uses GDAL so you could export to PBF if that's the data format that works best for you. Here's a bash script that shows you how:

for f in *.parquet;
do duckdb -c \
"install spatial;
load spatial;
COPY (SELECT id, st_geomfromwkb(geometry) from read_parquet('$f'))
to '$f.fgb' WITH (FORMAT GDAL, DRIVER 'flatgeobuf');";
done

Next steps

• Visualize the data in QGIS or kepler.gl.
• Make an interactive map.
• Consult one of our Data Guides to learn more about the data and for more advanced queries.