Is Västerås walkable?

This page covers Västerås: 161,000 people.

42/100Typical walking score where people live. It mixes the walk to eight daily needs with how pleasant the streets are.

42%Västerås is better than this share of places where people live, across the 20 countries on the map.

10thBy typical score, of the 13 cities in Sweden on this site.

In Västerås, 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 Hammarby (score 58) and hardest in Dingtuna (score 36): a gap of 22 points.

The walk to eight daily needs

The typical walk is the middle value: half of the buildings in Västerås 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	19 min	Worse than most	52%
Food and drink	13 min	Worse than most	62%
Shops	20 min	Nothing within 20 minutes for most buildings	50%
Health	over 20 min	Nothing within 20 minutes for most buildings	37%
School	9 min	About typical	75%
Parks	4 min	Better than most	79%
Culture	over 20 min	Nothing within 20 minutes for most buildings	42%
Public transport	6 min	Worse than most	87%

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 Västerås, 31% of the street cells are in the most walkable fifth, more than the 20% of an average place.

Share of the street cells in Västerås in each fifth. The dashed line marks 20%, the share every fifth has in Sweden.
Fifth of the street cells in Sweden	Bar	Västerås
Most walkable fifth		31%
Second fifth		9%
Middle fifth		17%
Fourth fifth		16%
Least walkable fifth		27%

The city at a glance

Each of the 2,403 hexagons groups the street cells within about 387 m of its centre and takes the shade of their middle fifth. The line is the boundary this page uses.

See Västerås 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 17 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 Västerås 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 Sweden.
Area	Typical score	In the top fifth
Hammarby	58	96%
Bäckby	53	100%
Södra Gryta	48	90%
Barkarö	47	59%
Hökåsen	44	67%

Least walkable

Letters A to E on the map.
Area	Typical score	In the top fifth
Dingtuna	36	47%
Tortuna	38	32%
Rönnby	38	58%
Hacksta	38	57%
Enhagen-Ekbacken	40	65%

Cities like Västerås

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

City	Country	People	Typical score
Jyväskylä	Finland	149,000	42
Örebro	Sweden	160,000	44
Derry and Strabane	United Kingdom	151,000	40

What this page covers

This page uses the boundary of Västerås as Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, draws it. About 161,000 people live there (2025 figure). Inside it we scored 34,401 street cells with 31,272 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.