Ontario · Civic arena
Owen Sound drinking water hardness is 209 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#66 of 343
58% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Owen Sound 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 Owen Sound water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Orillia · vs Elliot LakeHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Owen Sound from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Owen Sound.
Owen Sound sits at City Score rank #66 with a standing of 58%, 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 83 places versus 2022 (#149 → #66).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #75 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #165 of 343 at 159 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #81 of 343 (11.91 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 #66 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #108
Rank #75
Rank #245
Rank #165
No placement
Rank #81
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Owen Sound.
Municipal gallery named on the City home page and About list. It anchors the cultural roster beside the library and waterfront heritage
Downtown riverside district for shops, dining, and arts. City pages point here when they mean the historic core rather than the east-side
Municipal About copy brands Owen Sound the Scenic City and places it under Niagara Escarpment cliffs on Georgian Bay.
Where Owen Sound sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Owen Sound calls itself the Scenic City with a straight face, and the map backs the branding. The town sits in a valley under Niagara Escarpment cliffs on the southern shore of Georgian Bay, at the foot of the Bruce Peninsula. Harbour and bay do the framing; the Bruce Trail ribbons the escarpment edge and ties waterfalls into a walking circuit. Inglis Falls and Harrison Park are the named outdoors stops people actually give directions to. Kelso Beach at Nawash Park is the swim check every summer, the place Grey Bruce Public Health posts when bacteria levels push a beach advisory onto the City home page.
Downtown life clusters in the River District, the riverside strip of shops, dining, and arts that City pages treat as the core economy. Cultural addresses stack quickly: Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Billy Bishop Home & Museum, the Carnegie library building, Grey Roots nearby, and the Farmers' Market. Festival season brings Summerfolk Music & Crafts Festival, the Salmon Spectacular fishing derby, and winter's Festival of Northern Lights. Sun Times sports pages keep score for the Owen Sound Attack on the ice and the North Stars on the lacrosse floor, local teams that need no introduction once you have lived a winter here.
Getting in or out without a car often means GOST, the Guelph Owen Sound Transportation link the City keeps renewing in service notices. On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Owen Sound sits at rank 74 of 125. Rankings aside, the hometown read is Escarpment above, Georgian Bay ahead, and a River District you walk when you mean downtown.
Drawn from City of Owen Sound, City of Owen Sound About, Owen Sound Tourism, Owen Sound Sun Times.
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.
Municipal About copy brands Owen Sound the Scenic City and places it under Niagara Escarpment cliffs on Georgian Bay.
The Bruce Trail forms a ribbon around the city along the escarpment, linking falls and conservation ground.
Kelso Beach at Nawash Park is the named swim spot that carries Grey Bruce Public Health advisories on the City home page.
GOST is the Guelph Owen Sound Transportation service the City announces when intercity bus links continue.
Major city park on the municipal attractions list and a tourism staple. Streams, trails, and green space sit close enough to town that residents treat it as an everyday outdoors address.
Downtown riverside district for shops, dining, and arts. City pages point here when they mean the historic core rather than the east-side malls.
Municipal gallery named on the City home page and About list. It anchors the cultural roster beside the library and waterfront heritage stops.
Named natural attraction on the City About page, one of the escarpment stops hikers pair with Bruce Trail stretches. It is the waterfall locals give visitors before the brochure language starts.
When Owen Sound 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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