Kista comprises residential and commercial areas, the latter in the highly technological telecommunications and information technology industry. There are large research efforts in this entire area, which therefore is dubbed Kista Science City. It is the research park of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Kista Science City is the location where a large portion of the research and development of the world's 4G LTE mobile telephony infrastructure is being developed, to a European ETSI standard used worldwide. A majority is done at Ericsson, with 100,000 employees worldwide, but with its research and worldwide headquarters in the Kista Science City.
Kista was named after an old farm "Kista Gård", still located in the area. The construction of the modern parts were started in the 1970s. Most of the streets in Kista are named after towns and places in Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Before the opening of the Mall of Scandinavia, Kista Galleria was the biggest shopping center in the Stockholm region.
Because of its ICT industries, it became in the 1980s referred to as "Chipsta" and, after Sweden joined the EU in 1995, also as Europe's "Silicon Valley".
Overview
Etymology
Main building of Kista Gård, a farmhouse that Kista is named after
Kista got its name sometime in during 1600s and was named after a farmhouse in this area. The word Kista historically meant "place where livestock is traded", from the Old Swedish word "kvi", meaning livestock, and "sta(d)", meaning place.
Economy
Kista is the largest corporate area in Sweden and important to the national economy.
The construction of the industrial section of Kista began in the 1970s with companies such as SRA (Svenska Radioaktiebolaget, now a part of Ericsson), RIFA AB (later Ericsson Components AB, and later still Ericsson Microelectronics AB, and now Infineon Technologies), and IBM Svenska AB (the Swedish branch of IBM). Ericsson has had its headquarters in Kista since 2003. Cellmax is another local company founded and headquartered in Kista.
Kista is the largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) cluster in Europe, and was ranked the world's second largest cluster after Silicon Valley in California during the internet boom of 2000. It is the largest corporate area in Sweden, important to the national economy due to the presence of, among others, Ericsson, one of the largest corporations in Sweden.
Some companies that used to define Kista have left the area. The Kista neighborhood has seen incidents of[vague] robberies, stabbings, shootings, attempted murders and murders.
Swedish branch of IBM and Ericsson[failed verification], two of the biggest employers in the area, both departed in the mid-2020s. Fujitsu, Coor Service Management[sv], KTH Royal Institute of Technology as well as other organizations also left the area; however, KTH cited cost reduction, not safety as their justification. Relocations include public institutions, e.g. the local police station moved from Kista to Solna. In the mid-2020s, more than a third of office space in Kista was vacant.[compared to?] Various retailers have also relocated from Kista. There are several ongoing initiatives to improve safety in Kista.
Also the Swedish Co-location Centre of EU innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation EIT Digital is located in Kista and offers a 2-year Master program in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Parks and open spaces
Kista does not have any large and notable parks, but it has many green areas. According to statistics from Stockholm Municipality, each person in Kista has on average 94 square meters of green spaces within 500 meter radius.
↑Page 84. The Business of Global Energy Transformation: Saving Billions through Sustainable Models. Mats R. Larsson. Global Energy Transformation Institute. 2012, Palgrave Macmillan. Macmillan Publishers Limited, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, United Kingdom. https://books.google.com/books?id=RX4x1amBi44C&dq=Global+Transformation+kista&pg=PA84
↑Nygård, Anna (2025-03-03). "Fler företag flyttar från Kista". Nyhetsbyrån Järva (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 2025-03-09. Retrieved 2025-03-09. Fler företag flyttar från Kista. KTH, Coor, Fujitsu, delar av Ericsson och nu senast IBM. Många flyttlass går från Kista och lämnar stora ytor tomma. (transl.More companies are moving from Kista. KTH, Coor, Fujitsu, parts of Ericsson and, most recently, IBM. Many are leaving Kista, resulting in large office vacancies.)
↑"Järvaborna blir utan polisstation". Dagens Arena (in Swedish). 2025-03-09. Archived from the original on 2025-03-09. Retrieved 2025-03-09. Polishuset i Kista har under flera år erbjudit hjälp och service till boende i området. Nu kommer boende istället behöva vända sig till polisen i Solna. (transl.The police station in Kista has offered help and services to residents in the area for many years. Now the residents will have to go to Solna instead.)
