Ontario · Civic arena
Kingston drinking water hardness is 165 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#307 of 343
38% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Kingston 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.
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.
Full Kingston water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Halton Hills · vs Temiskaming ShoresHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Kingston from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Kingston.
Kingston sits at City Score rank #307 with a standing of 38%, 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 29 places versus 2022 (#278 → #307).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #277 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #28 of 343 at 265 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #17 of 343 (13.54 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 #307 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #193
Rank #277
Rank #88
Rank #28
No placement
Rank #17
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Kingston.
Near-downtown heritage neighbourhood of nineteenth-century limestone streets, the Kingston Courthouse precinct, and arts venues like
Downtown civic square the city calls the heart of community life. Markets, festivals, and everyday errands overlap here.
The Waterfront Pathway is an about 8 km walk from Lake Ontario Park to downtown.
Where Kingston sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Kingston sits where Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Rideau Canal meet, and locals still lead with that geography. Visit Kingston calls it the Limestone City and Canada's first capital, a walkable pile of nineteenth-century stone a short hop from Thousand Islands water. Sydenham Ward holds the courthouse precinct and church spires near downtown. Queen's University's limestone campus faces the waterfront. Springer Market Square, on the city homepage, is the square people mean for markets and civic noise.
The Waterfront Pathway runs roughly eight kilometres from Lake Ontario Park into the core, past Portsmouth Olympic Harbour, Kingston Penitentiary, the Tett Centre, and Fort Frontenac. Portsmouth Village keeps the west-end harbour feel: old quarry and shipyard streets, seasonal Pen tours, and the 1976 Olympic sailing basin. Across the LaSalle Causeway, Barriefield Village sits as a Heritage Conservation District on the Cataraqui River. August brings the Kingston Sheep Dog Trials Festival to Grass Creek Park in Kingston East.
Music is part of the civic brand too. Visit Kingston ties walking tours and anniversary programming to The Tragically Hip without needing a tourist brochure to explain why. The Whig-Standard remains the local paper of record for lake and city news. Barriefield Village across the causeway gives another limestone walk when downtown is packed, and Grass Creek Park takes the Sheep Dog Trials crowd each August. On OpenStats City Score for 2026, Kingston sits at rank 75 of 125. The hometown framing stays limestone, waterfront pathway, and three waterways first.
Drawn from Visit Kingston - 10 reasons, Visit Kingston - Walkable Kingston, City of Kingston, Kingston Whig-Standard.
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
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.
Visit Kingston frames the city at the meeting of Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Rideau Canal.
The Waterfront Pathway is an about 8 km walk from Lake Ontario Park to downtown.
Portsmouth Olympic Harbour hosted yachting events for the 1976 Summer Olympics.
The City of Kingston promotes Springer Market Square as the heart of community life and events.
Shoreline walk linking Lake Ontario Park to downtown past Portsmouth Olympic Harbour and Kingston Penitentiary. Best single route for understanding how the city faces the water.
Downtown civic square the city calls the heart of community life. Markets, festivals, and everyday errands overlap here.
Near-downtown heritage neighbourhood of nineteenth-century limestone streets, the Kingston Courthouse precinct, and arts venues like The Spire.
West-end harbour village with Penitentiary tours in season and Portsmouth Olympic Harbour next door. Stone and brick streets keep a distinct feel from the downtown core.
When Kingston 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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