Ontario · Civic arena
Hamilton drinking water hardness is 104 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#10 of 343
69% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Hamilton 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 Hamilton water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Brockville · vs Whitchurch-StouffvilleHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Hamilton from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Hamilton.
Hamilton sits at City Score rank #10 with a standing of 69%, 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. The chart below shows how that standing moves year to year.
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #29 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #176 of 343 at 154 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #166 of 343 (10.11 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 #10 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #300
Rank #29
Rank #120
Rank #176
No placement
Rank #166
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Hamilton.
Downtown pedestrian park at Hughson Street South with cenotaph and memorial wall, a civic pause between King Street blocks.
Multi-use trail on an abandoned CN line from the Albion Falls area down toward Corktown Park, with views of the lower city and the brow.
Copps Pier Park on Pier 8 was designed with public water's-edge access and a sign inspired by steeltown heritage materials.
Where Hamilton sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Hamilton is easiest to explain in elevation. Below the Niagara Escarpment sits the harbour and downtown; above it, locals simply say the Mountain. City trail plans call the upper edge the Mountain Brow, a corridor of views running conceptually from Iroquoia Heights Conservation Area toward Devil's Punch Bowl. The Escarpment Rail Trail drops from the Albion Falls area toward Corktown Park, and the Red Hill Valley Recreational Trail cuts from the brow toward Lake Ontario. Getting between levels means knowing the accesses; living here means knowing which side of the brow you mean when you say home.
On the water, Pier 8 is the West Harbour outing: Copps Pier Park boardwalk and stage, year-round skating, Music on the Waterfront, Scoops, and trolley loops past HMCS Haida toward Princess Point. Municipal park signage at Copps Pier still nods to steeltown heritage even as the programming sells harbour leisure. Downtown, Gore Park holds the cenotaph and memorial wall on the pedestrianized King Street block, while King William Street hosts lunchtime sets with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra on summer Wednesdays.
Day-to-day tools are blunt and local. HSR schedules and detours sit on the city homepage beside waste calendars and my.hamilton.ca. Pier 4 Park Beach appears in public-health notices when the harbour misbehaves. Spectator fronts track shelter capacity and council races; the waterfront calendar keeps salsa and stage nights on Pier 8. Hamilton's character is the stack of harbour, escarpment, and Mountain, with a steeltown waterfront that now sells music and ice as readily as it once sold shift work.
Drawn from City of Hamilton - Mountainbrow Trail, City of Hamilton - Waterfront at Pier 8, City of Hamilton - Trails Listing, City of Hamilton, The Hamilton Spectator.
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
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Average rent for purpose-built 2-bedroom apartments (all tenants) from CMHC Rental Market Survey. Rank 1 = lowest average rent among covered CMAs.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Hamilton in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Purpose-built rental apartment vacancy rate from CMHC Rental Market Survey (October). Rank 1 = highest vacancy (most available rental stock among covered CMAs).
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Hamilton in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
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 Hamilton 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.
3 editions · 2014–2018
Housing
National Bank of Canada Economics and Strategy
Ranked by Mortgage Payment as a Percentage of Income (MPPI) on a representative home. Rank 1 = highest MPPI (least affordable). Free quarterly Housing Affordability Monitor tables.
2 editions · 2025–2026
Quality of life
Numbeo
Crowd-sourced composite Quality of Life Index. Historical snapshots are free on Numbeo ranking pages; OpenStats cites Canadian cities from those public pages (cite_only). Higher index scores are better; ranks are global position on the snapshot page.
Single edition · 2026
Only one published edition places Hamilton in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Municipal trail planning uses Mountain Brow for the upper escarpment edge locals often just call the Mountain.
Copps Pier Park on Pier 8 was designed with public water's-edge access and a sign inspired by steeltown heritage materials.
The Harbour West Trolley Tour runs a narrated loop from Pier 8 to Princess Point past HMCS Haida and the marinas.
HSR is the municipal transit system featured among the city's primary resident service tools.
West Harbour destination with Copps Pier Park, stage programming, skating, and harbour tours. The easy answer when someone says they are heading to the waterfront.
Multi-use trail on an abandoned CN line from the Albion Falls area down toward Corktown Park, with views of the lower city and the brow.
Downtown pedestrian park at Hughson Street South with cenotaph and memorial wall, a civic pause between King Street blocks.
Eastern escarpment landmark named as the Mountain Brow Trail corridor's east terminus in city feasibility planning.
When Hamilton 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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