Ontario · Civic arena
Guelph drinking water hardness is 169 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#104 of 343
55% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Guelph 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 Guelph water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Kingsville · vs Carleton PlaceHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Guelph from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Guelph.
Guelph sits at City Score rank #104 with a standing of 55%, 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 31 places versus 2022 (#73 → #104).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #30 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #77 of 343 at 219 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #253 of 343 (8.43 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 #104 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #184
Rank #30
Rank #258
Rank #77
No placement
Rank #253
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Guelph.
Trailhead for the Silvercreek Trail toward Centennial and W.E. Hamilton parks, carrying the Royal City name into the park system.
River corridor trail via Riverside Park, part of the wider Speed and Downtown Trail network that orients daily walks and rides.
Market Square's skating rink and wading pool were built with help from the volunteer Rink Rats fundraising committee.
Where Guelph sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Guelph still answers to the Royal City, a nickname the municipal history page traces to John Galt naming the 1827 Canada Company town for the British royal Guelph lineage. Galt's plan radiated from a focal point at the Speed River, and that river remains the everyday spine. The Speed River Trail runs through Riverside Park; the Downtown Trail follows the water past John Galt, Goldie Mill, and Joseph Wolfond Park West; the Eramosa River Trail and Silvercreek Trail from Royal City Park fill out the rest of a walking city.
Downtown, Market Square sits between City Hall and the shops on Carden Street, spanning Wilson to Wyndham with an outdoor skating rink that becomes a wading pool in warm months and a glass pavilion for warming up. It is a modern reading of the old Market Place district that once hosted the Provincial Winter Fair, and it still works as the meet-up before a walk along the limestone streets municipal history credits to local quarries.
Campus life is part of the civic self-portrait. The University of Guelph shows up in municipal facts for research such as the Yukon Gold potato, and the Ontario Veterinary College is listed as the oldest school of its kind in the Western hemisphere. Summer calendars add Hot Summer Nights in the parks and Fourth Fridays at the Guelph Civic Museum. Between trail loops, Market Square ice, and a university town rhythm, Guelph feels planned on purpose and still lived along the Speed.
Drawn from City of Guelph - About Guelph, City of Guelph - Story behind the Square, City of Guelph - Trails, Guelph Mercury Tribune.
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
The Globe and Mail
2023 data partnership with Environics Analytics ranking 439 Canadian communities on ten livability categories.
Single edition · 2023
Only one published edition places Guelph 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 · 2014–2017
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Guelph is called the Royal City because John Galt named the town for the British royal Guelph family line in 1827.
Market Square's skating rink and wading pool were built with help from the volunteer Rink Rats fundraising committee.
Municipal facts credit a University of Guelph team led by Dr. Gary Johnston with creating the Yukon Gold potato.
The Ontario Veterinary College, noted in city facts, was founded in 1862.
Civic square between City Hall and Carden Street with rink, wading pool, and glass pavilion. The downtown meet-up for festivals and ordinary evenings alike.
River corridor trail via Riverside Park, part of the wider Speed and Downtown Trail network that orients daily walks and rides.
Trailhead for the Silvercreek Trail toward Centennial and W.E. Hamilton parks, carrying the Royal City name into the park system.
Major Speed River park on the trail system; municipal facts note the 1905 naming contest that stuck.
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