Photo: Ulf LeideIn global terms, Stockholm is a small capital city that punches above its weight. In international rankings, Stockholm is among the top scorers on quality of life, safety and trust, as well as democracy, gender equality and innovation. Many people move to the region for precisely this reason.
In global terms, Stockholm is a small capital city that punches above its weight. In international rankings, Stockholm is among the top scorers on quality of life, safety and trust, as well as democracy, gender equality and innovation. Many people move to the region for precisely this reason.
The Stockholm region is the engine powering the Swedish economy and Stockholm is its business, administrative and financial centre. It is home to areas that are important on an inter-national scale. The city centre and the inner city host the financial sector and creative industries such as gaming, music and fashion. Kista boasts the ICT cluster at Kista Science City. The region has several high-ranking universities and higher education institutions.
Seen over the (pre-pandemic) period 2003-2019, Stockholm’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by an average of 3.7 percent per year. This makes Stockholm having one of the fastest growing economies among the 20 most competitive metropolitan regions in Western Europe, second only to Dublin – the fangs of the “Celtic Tiger” – and side by side with Berlin, a regional economy still strongly fueled by the tremendous amounts of public investments and private firm re-establishments that took place in the wake of the German reunification.
Amonge 20 metropolitan regions, Stockholm is expected to have the second highest population growth until the year 2040. Since long-term employment growth is determined by population growth, this implies that Stockholm has an important component in place to guarantee continued rapid economic growth.
You can get a rough prognosis of future GDP growth by combining expected future population growth and historic productivity growth. With this approximate forecasting method, Stockholm is projected to maintain its top position among the 20 most competitive metropolitans In Europe, once again second only to Dublin.
An economy can grow in two ways; either by increasing the number of hours worked or by having each employed person produce more per hour, i.e. through increased labor productivity.
Stockholm exhibits a good balance between these two sources of economic growth. From 2003 to 2019, employment grew by an average of 1.5 percent per year, while annual productivity growth amounted to an average of 2.2 percent.
An economy characterized by both high productivity growth and high employment growth tends to offer a less bumpy ride along the business cycle. If productivity growth for some reason suddenly falls sharply, the high underlying employment growth works as a cushion for the regional economy – and vice versa.
Photo: Susanne Walström, Image Bank SwedenStockholm is to be a growing city, attracting people, companies and visitors from across the world. A rapid rate of urban development is to guarantee homes and public services for every-one. Good accessibility means giving people and companies everything they need to develop and grow.
Stockholm is to be a cohesive city where mov-ing between different areas and visiting new places comes naturally. People with different backgrounds must be able to encounter each other as they go about their daily lives and the city’s many urban settings with all their dif-ferent features must be accessible to all of the city’s residents.
Stockholm is to have many, diverse local areas with strong identities and flourishing district centres. Every part of the city must offer a good environment in which to live with good access to the benefits of urban living and well-de-signed, safe public spaces encouraging partici-pation and engagement in local community life.
Stockholm is to be a climate-smart city in which efficient land use and a transport-efficient lay-out foster greater accessibility, a lower climate impact and limited consumption of resources. The structure of the city and its technical sys-tems must be highly functional and resilient, enabling the city to cope with climate change and other stress factors.
While construction projects are being planned throughout the whole region, there is a concentration of projects in central Stockholm. The expected volume of construction over the coming years largely exceeds what can be accomplished with the existing regional working force. The Stockholm County alone will be in need of approximately 30-40 000 construction workers in mostly manual labor trades. The large volume of investment in construction projects and the shortage of labor force provide great opportunity for international investors and construction companies to enter the regional market.
Stockholmshusen is the largest development projects with the goal of building thousands of new rental apartments. Approximately 3,300 new tenancies are to be created, divided into 25 different projects.
The aim of Stockholmshusen is to save time and reduce costs by repeating the design, building serially and working with overlapping processes. The houses are built with high demands on sustainability and efficient energy supply. The serial production of the houses, combined with the large volume, creates repetition effects and economies of scale that reduce costs over time and enable lower rental levels than new production in general.
The concept is in harmony with Stockholm’s building tradition and incorporates smart new solutions, such as green roofs or the use of photovoltaic roofing.
The subway extension consists of 18 stations and three miles of new tracks. The new subway enables the construction of 130,500 new homes for over 300,000 people.
In addition to extensions of the existing lines, a new line (yellow) is currently in the planning phase. The new subway line will stretch between Fridhemsplan and Älvsjö and connect the central and southern parts of Stockholm. This enables 48,500 new homes with sustainable communications to be built. The line will provide new travel opportunities with flexible public transport hubs while reducing traffic on existing routes. The yellow line will consist of six new stations and travel time between the end stations is estimated to be 10 minutes. The start of procurement is set for 2025 and the line is planned to be completed and opened for traffic by 2034.
"The investment in a faster connection between Oslo and Stockholm is the railway project with the greatest commercial potential in Scandinavia"
Photo: Johannes Frandsen, Stockholm Business RegionPhoto: Johannes Frandsen, Stockholm Business Region"The investment in a faster connection between Oslo and Stockholm is the railway project with the greatest commercial potential in Scandinavia"
Jonas Karlsson, CEO, AB Oslo-Stockholm 2.55
Oslo-Stockholm 2.55 is Scandinavia’s most profitable railway project. The project is about strengthening the connection between two capitals in Scandinavia at a distance of just over 40 miles – a route through Sweden’s most populous area where nearly 3.5 million people live and a link between two of Europe’s currently fastest growing cities, uniquely connected in trade, business and culture.
With improvements of today’s infrastructure and a couple of new links, a journey time of 2 hours 40 minutes could be achieved. With four or five stops along the way, a regular train with a speed of up to 250 km/h manages a journey time of under three hours. Improvements of the infrastructure would also improve the possibilities for freight traffic on the route.
The East Link is an approximately 16 km long new double track railway between Järna and Linköping. With large cities such as Nyköping, Norrköping and Linköping along the route, existing tracks are being used to their full capacity today while the needs from growing commuter numbers and the logistics sector are rising. The East Link will enable more trains and contribute to larger labor market regions, smoother work commuting and regional development.
The maximum travel speed on the new railway will be 250 km/h and 25 percent of the rail track will run on bridges or in tunnels. In total over 200 new bridges and 30 tunnels of various length are planned along the route.
The project planning for most of The East Link is ongoing. Construction is scheduled to start in 2024 and the railway will open to traffic in 2035.
With an increasing population and expanding labor market, infrastructure investments and planning of residential construction has been high up on the agenda. So high, that the government of Sweden has made a deal with local authorities to invest heavily in regional infrastructure in exchange for large scale planning of new residential areas at a local level. The results of this deal are visible in the quantity and size of the region’s investments in urban development projects. More than half of total investments are in residential buildings. Slightly more than one fourth of the planned investments are in transportation, logistics and infrastructure, such as the extension of the subway system, extension and capacity increase of the railway system and several large highway projects. The last part is made up of investments in industrial complexes, office buildings and workplaces as well as public services, public space and commercial buildings to service the growing population.
The planned construction projects require a workforce that is larger than what the region can supply. According to forecasts made by Statistics Sweden, almost 30,000 new workers from construction-related disciplines will be needed by 2035. The largest deficit is for engineers with an estimated shortage of almost 12,000 by 2035. The forecasts predict a deficit of more than 11,000 construction workers in Stockholm County by 2035.
Division into categories.
Photo: Henrik Trygg
Photo: Felix Gerlach / imagebanksweden.se