Is Malmö walkable?

This page covers Malmö: 366,000 people, including Bunkeflostrand and Oxie.

54/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.
60%Malmö is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.
2ndBy typical score, of the 13 cities in Sweden on this site.

In Malmö, the walk to a park is the strong point: 2 minutes for the typical building, much better than most of Europe. The walk to culture is the weak point: 13 minutes for the typical building, about typical for Europe. Walking is easiest in Västra Hamnen (score 80) and hardest in Vintrie (score 43): a gap of 37 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Malmö 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
Groceries8 minAbout typical88%
Food and drink7 minAbout typical89%
Shops7 minAbout typical92%
Health10 minAbout typical81%
School5 minBetter than most95%
Parks2 minMuch better than most98%
Culture13 minAbout typical72%
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 7,843,708 street cells in Sweden from hardest to easiest to walk, then cut the list into five equal groups, called fifths. In Malmö, 78% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Malmö in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Sweden.
Fifth of the street cells in SwedenBarMalmö
Most walkable fifth
78%
Second fifth
2%
Middle fifth
3%
Fourth fifth
6%
Least walkable fifth
11%

The city at a glance

12345ABCDE
Each of the 2,034 hexagons groups the street cells within about 167 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.
See Malmö 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 15 areas where people live: each has at least 200 street cells and 221 buildings, and at least a quarter as many buildings per street cell as Malmö as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.

Even Vintrie, the least walkable area here, has 73% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth in Sweden. Malmö walks far better than most of the country, so even its weakest areas beat most other places.

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 Sweden.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
8091%
69100%
60100%
60100%
5698%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
AreaTypical scoreIn the top fifth
4373%
4443%
4457%
4872%
4994%

Cities like Malmö

These three cities come closest to Malmö in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Malmö scores higher than all three.

CityCountryPeopleTypical score
Cheshire West and ChesterUnited Kingdom339,00053
WalsallUnited Kingdom282,00054
AarhusDenmark319,00052

What this page covers

This page uses the boundary of Malmö as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. Besides Malmö itself, it takes in Bunkeflostrand and Oxie. About 366,000 people live there (2025 figure). Inside it we scored 13,441 street cells with 45,438 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.