Ontario · Civic arena
Peterborough drinking water hardness is 252 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#225 of 343
46% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Peterborough 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 Peterborough water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Port Hope · vs AjaxHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Peterborough from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Peterborough.
Peterborough sits at City Score rank #225 with a standing of 46%, 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 11 places versus 2022 (#236 → #225).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #294 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #243 of 343 at 102 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #197 of 343 (9.54 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 #225 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #45
Rank #294
Rank #252
Rank #243
No placement
Rank #197
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Peterborough.
Downtown lake with the municipal marina, nearby beach access, and summer park programming. It is the water body Peterborough orients around
Free City zoo on more than 50 acres of Water Street waterfront parkland. Splash pad, train ride, and animal exhibits make it the default
The Peterborough Marina sits on downtown Little Lake with Otonabee River access to the Trent-Severn Waterway.
Where Peterborough sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Peterborough orients itself on water before it orients on highways. Little Lake sits in the downtown basin with the Peterborough Marina on the shore, and the Otonabee River carries boaters toward the Trent-Severn Waterway. Just upstream, Lock 21 is the Peterborough Lift Lock, the hydraulic lift locals still point out as the engineering marvel on the route. City marina copy calls the place a gateway to cottage country without needing a tourism slogan to finish the thought. Summer concert series and park picnics share the same lakefront, so downtown and the water feel like one circuit.
North on Water Street, Riverview Park and Zoo is the free-admission City zoo people actually take guests to, CAZA-accredited and paid for in part through water rates. Rogers Cove and Beavermead Beach handle the swim calendar, complete with the occasional bacteria closure notice that names one beach closed while the other stays open. Ashburnham Memorial Park sits near the Museum and Archives and the Lift Lock visitor area. The Art Gallery of Peterborough and Bonnerworth Park skateboard park fill out the recreation map for days that are not about locks or lakes.
Examiner fronts mix city briefs with wider Kawarthas coverage, so Television Road load limits and landfill tire piles land beside regional court stories. On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Peterborough sits at rank 94 of 125. Rankings aside, the hometown read is Little Lake in the middle, the Lift Lock upstream, and Riverview when someone asks what there is to do with kids.
Drawn from City of Peterborough, City of Peterborough Marina, City of Peterborough parks and pavilions, The Peterborough Examiner.
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.
The Peterborough Marina sits on downtown Little Lake with Otonabee River access to the Trent-Severn Waterway.
Lock 21 upstream of Little Lake is the Peterborough Lift Lock, described on the marina page as the world's highest hydraulic lift lock.
Riverview Park and Zoo is City-run, free admission, and listed as Canada's only CAZA-accredited free zoo.
Rogers Cove and Beavermead Beach are the named municipal swim spots on City beach advisories.
Lock 21 on the Trent-Severn above Little Lake, the hydraulic lift locals treat as the city's signature engineering stop. Marina pages put it a short way upstream from downtown docks.
Free City zoo on more than 50 acres of Water Street waterfront parkland. Splash pad, train ride, and animal exhibits make it the default family outing.
Downtown lake with the municipal marina, nearby beach access, and summer park programming. It is the water body Peterborough orients around before anyone mentions cottage highways.
Lakeside park with beach, splash pad, boat launch, and trails. Beach advisories name it specifically when bacteria levels close swimming for a weekend.
When Peterborough 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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