High shopping centre density in Sweden

Sweden is among those countries with the highest shopping centre density worldwide. About 9 millions inhabitants have more than 6 millions sqm GLA of shopping centres at their disposal. This equals a shopping centre density of 0,67 sqm per inhabitant. In Austria the density is less than half with about 0,31 sqm.

Shopping centres in Sweden can be found in 100 of the total of 290 municipalities. There are more than 300 shopping centres with more than 5 000 sqm GLA. Most of the centres are concentrated in the region of Stockholm, followed by Göteborg and Malmö. Stockholm has a shopping centre density of about 1sqm per inhabitant. Besides this around 45% of the total retail turnover in Stockholm is achieved by shopping centres, nationwide shopping centres are responsible for 30% of the total retail sales.

Considering this high saturation the development of new retail properties has slowed down in the past years. Whilst between 1995 and 2000 there were about 60 new shopping centres, since then “only” 50 new shopping centres came on the market. Currently there are about 20 projects in the pipeline, however some of them are only extensions of existing centres. The most striking project is the “Mall of Scandinavia” with around 100 000 sqm GLA in the Northern part of Stockholm called Solna.