WalkablyIn Umeå, 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: most buildings have none within 20 minutes. Walking is easiest in Ersboda (score 56) and hardest in Sörmjöle (score 34): a gap of 22 points.
The walk to eight daily needs
The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Umeå 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.
| Need | Typical walk | Compared with Europe | Buildings with one within 20 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groceries | 12 min | Worse than most | 63% |
| Food and drink | 10 min | Worse than most | 68% |
| Shops | 13 min | Worse than most | 59% |
| Health | over 20 min | Nothing within 20 minutes for most buildings | 44% |
| School | 7 min | Better than most | 74% |
| Parks | 4 min | Better than most | 74% |
| Culture | 18 min | Worse than most | 53% |
| Public transport | 4 min | About typical | 92% |
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 Umeå, 35% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.
| Fifth of the street cells in Sweden | Bar | Umeå |
|---|---|---|
| Most walkable fifth | 35% | |
| Second fifth | 16% | |
| Middle fifth | 25% | |
| Fourth fifth | 14% | |
| Least walkable fifth | 10% |
The city at a glance
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 19 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 Umeå as a whole, so ports, hill parks and farmland drop out. Click a name to open it on the map.
Even Sörmjöle, the least walkable area here, has 67% of its street cells in the most walkable fifth in Sweden. Umeå walks far better than most of the country, so even its weakest areas beat most other places.
Most walkable
| Area | Typical score | In the top fifth |
|---|---|---|
| 56 | 99% | |
| 56 | 92% | |
| 56 | 74% | |
| 55 | 79% | |
| 54 | 96% |
Cities like Umeå
These three cities come closest to Umeå in number of people and typical score, from any of the 20 countries. Umeå scores higher than 1 of them and lower than 2.
| City | Country | People | Typical score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bergen | Norway | 145,000 | 47 |
| Guimarães | Portugal | 157,000 | 46 |
| Tunbridge Wells | United Kingdom | 118,000 | 47 |
What this page covers
This page uses the boundary of Umeå as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. About 134,000 people live there (2025 figure). Inside it we scored 63,242 street cells with 32,816 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.