Is Copenhagen (København) walkable?

This page covers greater Copenhagen: 559,000 people, including Kongens Lyngby and Kastrup.

Denne side på dansk

58/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
66%Copenhagen is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
1stHighest typical score of the 4 cities in Denmark on this site.

In Copenhagen, the walk to a park is the strong point: 4 minutes for the typical building, better than most of Europe. The walk to health care is the weak point: 11 minutes for the typical building, about typical for Europe. Walking is easiest in Østerbro (score 84) and hardest in Kildebrønde (score 33): a gap of 51 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Copenhagen have a shorter walk, and half have a longer one. The words compare it with every place where people live in the 20 countries on the map, so the same minutes get the same word everywhere.

NeedTypical walkCompared with EuropeBuildings with one within 20 min
Groceries6 minBetter than most98%
Food and drink6 minBetter than most98%
Shops6 minBetter than most98%
Health11 minAbout typical83%
School6 minBetter than most98%
Parks4 minBetter than most99%
Culture11 minBetter than most89%
Public transport4 minBetter than most100%

Compared with the rest of the country

The map is cut into six-sided cells 55 m across, and every cell that a street passes through gets a score: we call these street cells. We sort all 1,906,103 street cells in Denmark from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Copenhagen, 87% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Copenhagen in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Denmark.
Fifth of the street cells in DenmarkBarCopenhagen
Most walkable fifth
87%
Second fifth
7%
Middle fifth
3%
Fourth fifth
2%
Least walkable fifth
1%

The city at a glance

12345ABCDE
Each of the 2,075 hexagons groups the street cells within about 293 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Copenhagen on the map

On the map, click any street to see its score and the walk to each need.

The most and least walkable areas

Each street cell takes the name of the nearest neighbourhood, village or town on OpenStreetMap, up to 1.5 km away. We rank the 89 areas where people live: each has at least 200 street cells and 500 buildings, and at least a quarter as many buildings per street cell as Copenhagen as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

Most walkable

Numbers 1 to 5 on the map. In the top fifth: share of the area’s street cells in the most walkable fifth in Denmark.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
84100%
8399%
82100%
81100%
81100%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
3312%
3843%
3942%
4159%
4171%

Cities like Copenhagen

These three cities come closest to Copenhagen in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Copenhagen scores higher than 2 of them and lower than 1.

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
OsloNorway700,00057
PalermoItaly629,00059
MurciaSpain472,00056

What this page covers

This page uses the area Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, calls greater Copenhagen: the city and the towns that have grown into it. Besides Copenhagen itself, it takes in Kongens Lyngby, Kastrup, Greve Strand, Tårnby, Herlev, Glostrup and smaller places. About 559,000 people live there (2013 figure). Inside it we scored 43,463 street cells with 279,216 buildings in them.

Every number here comes from the same scores as the map. The score runs from 0 to 100. The walk to eight daily needs on real streets makes up 60% of it, and how pleasant the streets are makes up 40%. The comparison with Europe counts every place by its buildings, 163,668,724 buildings in all. How the score works.