Abbotsford, British Columbia
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British Columbia · Civic arena

Abbotsford

Abbotsford drinking water hardness is 138 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.

Civic arena · hometown HUD

Abbotsford

Census_metropolitan_area196k pop
47XP
#220

#220 of 343

47% City Score XP

DroppingDirect
City Score XP

7/8 pillars on the board

47%#220

Decade trail

Abbotsford packs 7 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.

Abbotsford drinking water

Direct municipal reading

Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.

Hardness
138 mg/L
hard
pH
7.6
Lead
0.2 μg/L

Full Abbotsford water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Creston · vs CoquitlamHardness guide

Watershed to tap · system map

How Abbotsford's water works

Open full map

Source, treatment, and distribution for Abbotsford from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.

Local numbers for Abbotsford

Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Abbotsford.

How Abbotsford scores

Dropping14

Abbotsford sits at City Score rank #220 with a standing of 47%, from 7 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. Dropping 14 places versus 2022 (#206 → #220).

Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #301 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #118 of 343 at 188 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #305 of 343 (7.53 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.

#220
Arena rank (of 343)
47%
City Score
7
Pillars observed
Dropping14
vs 2022
#206 → #220

Arena loadout

Topic XP bars

Arena rank #220 of 343

City Score

7/8 pillars · main XP bar

47%#220
Drinking water

Rank #235

69%
Building permits

Rank #301

13%
Internet

Rank #223

35%
Radon

Rank #118

34%
Hazards

No placement

Property tax

Rank #305

89%

Achievements

Dropping -14Direct municipal reading

Hometown notes

Archive

Earlier years: 2026 · 2025 · 2024 · 2023

Abbotsford in brief

Abbotsford, or Abby if you read the local masthead, introduces itself as farm country first. City agriculture pages call it one of the most intensively and diversely farmed areas in Canada, with about 72 percent of the municipal land base inside the Agricultural Land Reserve. Blueberries and raspberries take serious acreage, poultry barns are part of the economic count, and AgRefresh keeps ALR zoning and compliance on the planning desk. Tourism Abbotsford brands the same story as Handmade & Homegrown and Heart of the Fraser Valley, with an acknowledgement of Semá:th and Máthxwi territories under that hospitality pitch.

August still rearranges the calendar. The Abbotsford International Airshow fills the sky with Snowbirds, CF-18 demos, and a food-truck field big enough to feel like its own festival, while Agrifair keeps the agricultural fair tradition on the Abbotsford News photo desk. Between those weekends, Go! Abbotsford is the civic events brand for everything from culture programming to farm experiences. Historic Downtown has its own parking and services identity, and Fraser Highway shows up in infrastructure funding notices as the corridor that needs constant work.

Summer civic life also sounds like water and smoke talk. Stage 2 outdoor water restrictions travel as Abbotsford and Mission messaging under Our Water Matters, and High fire-danger ratings sit on the city homepage when the hills dry out. The OpenStats City Score ranks Abbotsford 51 of 125 in 2026, with a strong building-permit placement in the same datapack. The hometown tell is simpler: berry trucks on ALR roads, Airshow weekend traffic, and an Abby News habit of treating farm and flight as the same community beat.

Drawn from City of Abbotsford, City of Abbotsford, Abbotsford News, Tourism Abbotsford, Abbotsford International Airshow.

City Score over time

City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.

0%25%50%75%100%2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
OpenStats City Score

Rankings for Abbotsford

Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.

Connectivity · OpenStats

OpenStats Broadband Download Speeds

OpenStats

Cities ranked by estimated best advertised download (Mbps). Anchored to the current ISED National Broadband Data vintage, then backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber-arrival and 50/10 availability paths so relative ranks can change over the decade. Not a claim of audited historical hex maps for every year.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#223
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 300.8

Construction · OpenStats

OpenStats Building Permit Value

OpenStats

Cities ranked by calendar-year building permit value. Direct rows sum Statistics Canada Table 34-10-0292-01. Cities without a direct reading use population × provincial per-capita permit intensity (estimated), so every seed city has a year-varying construction signal.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#301
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 153869219

Composite · OpenStats

OpenStats City Score

OpenStats

Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016–2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0–1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Growth and CSI use StatCan annual tables; permits, mill rates, and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#220
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.469

Safety · OpenStats

OpenStats Crime Severity Index

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index (Table 35-10-0026-01). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Values are CMA where a metro match exists, otherwise provincial CSI. Hometown pages label the grain.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#41
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 95.53

Water · OpenStats

OpenStats Drinking Water Hardness

OpenStats

Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#235
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 138

Health · OpenStats

OpenStats Highest Indoor Radon

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#118
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 188

Growth · OpenStats

OpenStats Population Growth

OpenStats

Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#87
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.01982564597642324

Property tax · OpenStats

OpenStats Residential Mill Rates

OpenStats

Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate. Rank 1 is the highest rate. Published municipal years are used when available; gaps are interpolated or follow the provincial median path so the tax pillar moves year to year for every city.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#305
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 7.530332474927993

Livability

Globe and Mail Most Livable Cities

The Globe and Mail

2023 data partnership with Environics Analytics ranking 439 Canadian communities on ten livability categories.

Single edition · 2023

#37
Published · 2023 · of 439

Only one published edition places Abbotsford in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.

Original source · Full edition

Livability

Maclean's Best Communities

Maclean's

Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).

Single edition · 2021

#91
Published · 2021 · of 415

Only one published edition places Abbotsford in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.

Original source · Full edition

Livability

MoneySense Best Places to Live

MoneySense

Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.

Single edition · 2018

#161
Published · 2018 · of 415

Only one published edition places Abbotsford in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.

Original source · Full edition

Worth knowing in Abbotsford

Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.

  • City agriculture pages report that about 72 percent of Abbotsford's land sits in the Agricultural Land Reserve, which is why farm policy feels like core civic business.

    City of Abbotsford

  • Municipal farm stats highlight thousands of hectares in blueberry and raspberry production alongside major poultry numbers.

    City of Abbotsford

  • The Abbotsford International Airshow markets itself as Canada's National Airshow, with Snowbirds and CF-18 demonstration teams among the August draws.

    Abbotsford International Airshow

  • Local paper branding shortens the city to Abby in Abby News, which is how residents already talk about the hometown desk.

    Abbotsford News

Places to see

Abbotsford International Airshow

The August aviation weekend with military and civilian demos, a huge static display, and a Fraser Valley food-truck field. For three days the city orients around the runway.

Historic Downtown

The named core district with its own parking and services identity on city pages. It is the walkable counterweight to farm roads and highway strips.

Fraser Highway corridor

A working arterial that keeps showing up in enhancement and funding news. Getting across town still means knowing how Fraser Highway is behaving that week.

ALR farm landscape

Berry fields, poultry barns, and fodder crops that define Abbotsford's map as much as any subdivision. Agriculture here is not a side attraction; it is most of the land base.

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