Områdeskollen

What's it actually like to live somewhere you don't know? Housing listings tell you about the home. Getting a feel for the area means piecing together information about schools, transport, prices and everyday life.

Områdeskollen is my ongoing attempt to bring that information together. What started as an experiment in building with AI has grown into a working site covering 647 areas in Stockholm and Uppsala counties.

Try Områdeskollen

Area results beside a map of Stockholm and Uppsala counties, coloured by median housing price — The map and list show the same areas. Here, colour represents median housing prices.

Exploring before choosing a home

You can search for a place, explore areas on a map, or narrow the list by housing type, budget and commute. An area profile brings together housing, schools, transport, demographics, safety data and nearby nature. Save a few places and compare them side by side.

The commute search uses public transport timetables, including the walk to a stop, transfers and the walk at the other end. It's a weekday estimate, so it won't tell you about today's delays.

Housing information for Norra Råsunda, showing sale prices and housing types — A closer look at Norra Råsunda: prices, the number of sales behind them and how people live in the area.

Making sense of the numbers

Bringing the data together means dealing with different sources, geographic boundaries and update cycles. A number can look precise while describing something much broader than the place you're looking at.

The site shows individual measures rather than an overall neighbourhood rating. A short commute and a lower housing price are useful things to compare; deciding how much each matters belongs to the person looking.

Some crime statistics are only available for the municipality. A housing price based on a handful of sales needs a different explanation from one based on hundreds. The interface needs to make those differences visible, with sources, dates and context alongside the figures.

Side-by-side comparison of Norra Råsunda and Vallentuna södra tätort — Compare places using the same measures. Municipal crime data is labelled separately from local figures.

Learning by building

I'm a designer without a development background. Working on this with AI has taken me into coordinate systems, geographic boundaries, data pipelines and public transport routing.

It's also made the design work more hands-on. Changing what a screen says can mean going back to the source data, checking the calculation and changing how the result is presented.

This is still a side project in progress, with coverage limited to Stockholm and Uppsala counties. I'm continuing to work on the data and how clearly the site explains it.