British Columbia · Civic arena
Kelowna drinking water hardness is 121 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#194 of 343
49% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Kelowna 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 Kelowna water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Vernon · vs SquamishHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Kelowna from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Kelowna.
Kelowna sits at City Score rank #194 with a standing of 49%, 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 18 places versus 2022 (#176 → #194).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #25 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #74 of 343 at 221 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #110 of 343 (11.33 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 #194 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #264
Rank #25
Rank #197
Rank #74
No placement
Rank #110
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Kelowna.
Named trestle trail stop on Tourism Kelowna's outdoor list when visitors want height and history in one ride.
Walkable arts block with Kelowna Art Gallery, Rotary Centre for the Arts, and Kelowna Community Theatre in close range.
Tourism markets Kelowna as Canada's first UNESCO City of Gastronomy and a four-season playground.
Where Kelowna sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Kelowna sits on Okanagan Lake in the heart of the Okanagan Valley, on the traditional territory of the syilx/Okanagan people, and the shoreline still organizes the week. Tourism calls it a four-season playground and a UNESCO City of Gastronomy; City Hall's profile talks mountains, vineyards, agriculture, construction, and a growing tech lane. Cap News covers the same place as Central Okanagan, where Lake Country and West Kelowna stories share the beat with downtown construction notices on corridors like Burtch Road.
The arts address locals give visitors is the Cultural District: six square blocks between Clement Avenue, Queensway Avenue, Water Street, and Ellis Street, with Kelowna Art Gallery, Rotary Centre for the Arts, Kelowna Community Theatre, museums, and the library in walking range. Above the water, Knox Mountain Park is the big natural-area landmark, hundreds of hectares rising about three hundred metres over the lake. Trail talk also names Myra Canyon Trestles, the Okanagan Rail Trail, and Crawford Trails when the bikes come out.
Wine touring and orchard seasons keep the visitor economy honest, and farm stands still mark the calendar as clearly as patio season. Imagine Kelowna language on the city profile keeps growth plans in public view. OpenStats places Kelowna mid-pack on City Score with strong building-permit value in the 2026 set, which matches a metro that feels busy on the ground. If someone mentions Knox, the Cultural District, and Okanagan Lake in one breath, they already have the working map.
Drawn from City of Kelowna, City of Kelowna, City of Kelowna, Tourism Kelowna, Kelowna Capital News.
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 Kelowna 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
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.
2 editions · 2025–2026
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
City profile copy places Kelowna on Okanagan Lake in syilx/Okanagan territory, with a long Agricultural Land Reserve footprint inside city limits.
Tourism markets Kelowna as Canada's first UNESCO City of Gastronomy and a four-season playground.
The Cultural District runs roughly six blocks between Clement, Queensway, Water, and Ellis, packing galleries, theatre, and museums.
Knox Mountain Park is Kelowna's largest natural-area park, with a summit about 300 metres above Okanagan Lake.
The hillside everyone points to north of downtown for a lake view, hike, or bike climb in dry Okanagan forest.
Walkable arts block with Kelowna Art Gallery, Rotary Centre for the Arts, and Kelowna Community Theatre in close range.
Named trestle trail stop on Tourism Kelowna's outdoor list when visitors want height and history in one ride.
Regional rail-trail corridor used for longer lake-country rides beyond the downtown shoreline.
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