Ontario · Civic arena
Ottawa drinking water hardness is 112 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#31 of 343
62% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Ottawa 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 Ottawa water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Woodstock · vs StratfordHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Ottawa from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Ottawa.
Ottawa sits at City Score rank #31 with a standing of 62%, 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. Rising 23 places versus 2022 (#54 → #31).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #179 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #30 of 343 at 262 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #323 of 343 (7.12 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 #31 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #285
Rank #179
Rank #163
Rank #30
No placement
Rank #323
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Ottawa.
Municipal theatre on the City arts roster, one of the civic stages Ottawans point to when the calendar needs a building name. It sits
West-end Ottawa River beach familiar enough that triathlon organizers use it as a swim start. Locals know the shore year-round; race
Colonel By Day is the local name OC Transpo and the City use for the August Civic Holiday service shifts.
Where Ottawa sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Ottawans measure the capital in station names and river crossings as much as in monuments. OC Transpo runs the daily grammar: bus routes folding into the O-Train, with Line 1 the Confederation spine people actually argue about when fall service changes land. Lincoln Fields Station shows up when west-end bridges or platforms need work. Winterlude brings its own vocabulary, the free Sno-Bus linking festival sites across Ottawa and into Gatineau, including a stop at ByWard Market. Come August, the Civic Holiday is Colonel By Day on City and transit notices, a local label that still surprises visitors reading a national calendar.
Neighbourhood talk stays concrete. Centretown and Alta Vista surface in ordinary Citizen briefs the way office towers never do. ByWard Market keeps the heritage-market pulse downtown, close enough to the Rideau Canal that cycling maps and heritage plans treat canal and market as one downtown circuit. West along the Ottawa River, Britannia Beach is where IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa starts its swim, turning a familiar shore into a weekend course map. Arts pages point to Shenkman Arts Centre and Doors Open Ottawa when the cultural calendar needs a civic address rather than a tourist brochure.
When something breaks, 3-1-1 is the number on ottawa.ca, not a generic help desk. Bluesfest weekends push OC Transpo into festival mode, then the city settles back into Line 1 frequency debates and Park & Ride talk. On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Ottawa sits at rank 21 of 125. Rankings aside, the hometown read is transit you name by line, a market you meet by, and a holiday that still answers to Colonel By.
Drawn from City of Ottawa, City of Ottawa public transit, OC Transpo, City of Ottawa arts, heritage and events, Ottawa Citizen.
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 Ottawa 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 Ottawa in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Housing
Demographia / Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Canadian subset of Demographia median multiple (median house price / median household income). Rank 1 = most affordable (lowest median multiple) among Canadian major markets in the international survey.
3 editions · 2024–2026
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 Ottawa in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
Single edition · 2019
Only one published edition places Ottawa in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Quality of life
Mercer
Expat-oriented quality of living ranking across 39 factors in 10 categories. OpenStats stores Canadian cities named in free Mercer press releases (typically top-25 highlights), not the full paid ranking.
2 editions · 2023–2024
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
6 editions · 2013–2018
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.
3 editions · 2024–2026
Housing
RBC Economics
Ranked by RBC aggregate Housing Affordability Measure (% of median pre-tax household income for mortgage, property taxes, and utilities on a benchmark home). Rank 1 = highest ownership-cost burden (least affordable). CMA markets mapped to primary city slugs.
2 editions · 2024–2025
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Colonel By Day is the local name OC Transpo and the City use for the August Civic Holiday service shifts.
Winterlude's free Sno-Bus links festival sites across Ottawa and Gatineau, with a ByWard Market stop on the route list.
O-Train Line 1 is the named rail spine in fall service improvement notices, not a generic subway line.
Britannia Beach has served as the swim start for IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa on the City transit event map.
Heritage market district that still functions as a downtown meet point. Transit pages treat it as a Winterlude stop; arts and cycling materials keep it tied to the Rideau Canal circuit.
West-end Ottawa River beach familiar enough that triathlon organizers use it as a swim start. Locals know the shore year-round; race weekends just redraw the road closures.
Municipal theatre on the City arts roster, one of the civic stages Ottawans point to when the calendar needs a building name. It sits in the same arts network as Meridian Theatres at Centrepointe and Arts Court.
West transit hub that surfaces whenever platforms or pedestrian bridges need work. It is the kind of station name that appears in service alerts more often than in tourist guides.
When Ottawa 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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