diff --git a/R/read_od.R b/R/read_od.R
index 6ef5f45..2f22400 100644
--- a/R/read_od.R
+++ b/R/read_od.R
@@ -15,6 +15,10 @@
 #'
 #'
 #'
+# Setting UTF-8 as default encoding for all R code files
+# especially because we have non-ASCII characters in city names
+options(encoding = "UTF-8")
+
 read_od <- function(city = "São Paulo",
                     year = 1977,
                     harmonize = FALSE) {