What is infrastructure? Counted in Swedish kilometres

You drive on it. You cycle on it. You complain about it when it is broken. But ask someone what infrastructure actually is, in figures, and most people go quiet.

This article gives the figures. No vision of the cities of the future, just what already exists, counted by the agencies responsible for it.

The road network is just over six times as long as the railway track

Start with what you drive on. The state road network in Sweden covers about 98,500 kilometres of road.^{2, 3} Of that, about 2,000 kilometres is motorway, a small part of the whole.² Roughly 80% of the length of the road network is paved, and the rest has a gravel surface.^{2, 3}

Along the roads there are 17,000 road bridges and 69 bridges that can open to let boats through.²

The railway is much shorter. Sweden's railway network consists of about 15,600 kilometres of track, of which the Swedish Transport Administration manages about 14,200 kilometres.^{1, 2} Around 80% of the railway is electrified.^{1, 2} The network also includes a large number of tunnels, bridges and level crossings.¹

And then the part people forget: the Swedish Transport Administration also maintains about 3,900 kilometres of footpaths and cycle paths, roughly 5% of the length of the paved road network.³

One thing to notice: two of the Swedish Transport Administration's own documents give the same figure with different precision.^{2, 3} One says that about 80,000 of the 98,500 kilometres are paved, the other says about 80%.^{2, 3} The two are consistent but not worded identically, and this article uses the percentage, because it comes from the more formal of the two sources.²

What an urban area actually is, according to the statistics

Now to the word urbanisation, which is the theme of this area. It needs an exact definition to be of any use, and Sweden has one.

A statistical urban area (tätort) is a continuous built-up area with at least 200 inhabitants.^{4, 5} It is not the same as a municipality or any other administrative boundary, and it is not the same as the urban area concept used by the mapping agency Lantmäteriet, which is defined differently.^{5, 10}

Since 2015 the definition has been built in several steps.^{5, 6} First a core is found, where the houses may be at most 150 metres apart.^{5, 6} Then cores are linked with other buildings via the road network. The distance allowed increases step by step with how many people live and work in the parts, from 200 metres up to at most 500 metres.^{5, 6} Sports grounds and cemeteries can be counted as part of an urban area.^{5, 6} Water without a bridge works as a barrier and divides it.^{5, 6}

Sweden has more than 2,000 such urban areas, and over 9 million people, 88% of the population, live in one.^{4, 5} Exactly 9,265,976 people, according to the 2023 statistics.^{4, 5}

In 2023 the statistical urban area of Stockholm had more than 1.65 million inhabitants and stretched across twelve municipalities, while the municipality of Stockholm had just under a million.^{5, 9, 10} The municipality of Uppsala has 31 urban areas, the most in the country, while thirteen municipalities have only one.^{5, 8} Sweden has ten urban areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants, all in the southern half of the country, and Uppsala is the furthest north of them.^{5, 10}

Sweden's most and least urban places

Here the country varies more than you might think. The highest urbanisation rate is in Stockholm County, at 97%.^{4, 5, 8} The lowest is in Gotland County, at 65%.^{4, 5, 8}

The municipality of Berg in Jämtland has the country's lowest urbanisation rate, 35%.^{5, 8} Arjeplog is Sweden's most sparsely populated municipality, with 0.2 inhabitants per square kilometre, yet 62% of its population lives in its only urban area.^{5, 8, 9} So sparsely populated and urban are not opposites: a municipality can be both, if almost everyone who lives there lives on the same small spot.⁵

How Sweden became a country of urban areas

The shift is more recent than you might think, and it went fast when it came.

200 years ago, 90% of Sweden's 2.3 million inhabitants at the time lived in the countryside.^{5, 7} By the early 1930s it was even between urban areas and the countryside, roughly half and half.^{5, 7}

The shift was fastest in the 1940s and 1950s: the population in urban areas grew by around a million people, while the population outside urban areas fell by 400,000, over the same decades.^{5, 7}

The whole time series, in number of people living in urban areas: 229,479 in 1800, 1,448,847 in 1900, 5,451,156 in 1960, 9,265,976 in 2023.⁷ And outside urban areas, in the same years: 2,117,824, 3,687,594, 2,046,811, 1,285,731.⁷

Read the two series side by side. One has grown forty times since 1800.⁷ The other has shrunk to less than two thirds.⁷ The same country, the same period, and opposite curves.

An urban area can also stop being one. It is removed from the register if its population falls below 200 inhabitants, or if it grows together with another urban area and becomes part of it instead.^{4, 5} The statistics on the number and extent of urban areas are based on data from 2023 and are updated less often than the population statistics, which are taken from the population register every year.⁵

What to take away

The state road network is about 98,500 kilometres, of which around 2,000 kilometres is motorway, and the railway is 15,600 kilometres of track.² A statistical urban area is a continuous built-up area with at least 200 inhabitants, and 9,265,976 people, 88% of the population, lived in one in 2023, against roughly half in the early 1930s.^{4, 5, 7} The force lies in inertia: networks are built once and used for decades, and the move into urban areas took two centuries, with the 1940s and 1950s as the fastest phase.^{5, 7} Follow three recurring publications: the Swedish Transport Administration's annual report with the lengths of the networks, Statistics Sweden's urban area statistics, and Statistics Sweden's population statistics from the population register, which are updated every year.^{2, 4, 5}

The next episode is S3:E2 Construction, about the road from detailed development plan to moving in, and how long it takes.

Education, not advice.