British Columbia · Civic arena
Burnaby drinking water hardness is 179 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#237 of 343
45% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Burnaby 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.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.
Full Burnaby water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Langley · vs ComoxHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Burnaby from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Burnaby.
Burnaby sits at City Score rank #237 with a standing of 45%, 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 66 places versus 2022 (#171 → #237).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #50 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #1 of 343 at 279 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #295 of 343 (7.74 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #237 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #162
Rank #50
Rank #262
Rank #1
No placement
Rank #295
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Burnaby.
An 86-hectare urban park with a finished perimeter trail and BC Parkway links. It is where fitness loops and forest shade share the same
A big conservation landscape above the city for hiking and mountain biking. Sunset views over the inlet are the local brag.
Municipal planning still calls Metrotown Burnaby's downtown, which is how residents argue about where the centre of town actually is.
Where Burnaby sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Burnaby orients itself as the geographic centre of Metro Vancouver, but locals navigate it by town centre. Metrotown is Burnaby's downtown and regional city centre, busy enough that Central Boulevard now gets a pedestrian scramble crossing. Brentwood, Lougheed, and Edmonds fill out the other quadrants as self-sufficient hubs with their own SkyTrain stops, towers, and errand strips. The city sits between Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River, so shoreline parks are part of ordinary weekend geography, not a special trip.
Green space is the other civic language. Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area spreads a trail network across hundreds of hectares above the inlet. Deer Lake Park anchors arts season, from Summer Stages to the Burnaby Blues + Roots Festival, and holds Burnaby Village Museum and Century Gardens, where the city's rhododendron gets its due. Central Park's perimeter trail loops an urban forest with a rubberized circuit that ties into the BC Parkway. Burnaby Lake Regional Nature Park keeps paddling and birdwatching in the middle of the city under a long Metro Vancouver partnership.
Barnet Marine Park puts you on Burrard Inlet; Burnaby Fraser Foreshore Park looks out over the working Fraser. Hotel Burnaby is a city-run stay in the mix, which fits a place that treats amenities as municipal business. Confederation Park and Kensington Park keep neighbourhood recreation closer to home when the big conservation areas feel like a hike. The OpenStats City Score ranks Burnaby 9 of 125 in 2026, but the hometown tell is simpler: which town centre you claim, which lake or mountain trail you walk, and whether Blues + Roots still feels like August.
Drawn from City of Burnaby, City of Burnaby, City of Burnaby.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
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
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
Construction · OpenStats
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
Composite · OpenStats
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
Safety · OpenStats
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
Water · OpenStats
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
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
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
Growth · OpenStats
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
Property tax · OpenStats
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
Livability
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
Single edition · 2021
Only one published edition places Burnaby in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Municipal planning still calls Metrotown Burnaby's downtown, which is how residents argue about where the centre of town actually is.
Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area alone carries roughly 30 kilometres of recreational trail inside a designated conservation landscape.
Central Park's completed perimeter trail is billed as one of the longer continuous rubberized walking circuits in Metro Vancouver.
Burnaby Blues + Roots keeps returning to Deer Lake Park as a free regional summer festival, not a ticketed import.
The arts-and-festival park in the middle of town, with trails, water, Burnaby Village Museum, and Century Gardens. Summer here means concerts as much as paddling.
A big conservation landscape above the city for hiking and mountain biking. Sunset views over the inlet are the local brag.
An 86-hectare urban park with a finished perimeter trail and BC Parkway links. It is where fitness loops and forest shade share the same circuit.
Burnaby's Burrard Inlet shoreline for waterfront walks and kayak put-ins. On clear evenings the inlet feels closer than the SkyTrain.
When Burnaby moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.
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