Quebec · Civic arena
Quebec City drinking water hardness is 250 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#112 of 343
54% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Quebec City 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 Quebec City water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Rimouski · vs Rivière-du-LoupHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Quebec City from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Quebec City.
Quebec City sits at City Score rank #112 with a standing of 54%, 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. The chart below shows how that standing moves year to year.
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #161 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #50 of 343 at 250 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #317 of 343 (7.24 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 #112 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #49
Rank #161
Rank #72
Rank #50
No placement
Rank #317
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Quebec City.
Municipal heritage discovery space on the city patrimoine menu. It signals that Quebec City treats conservation as a public program,
STQ ferry that pairs the capital with Lévis across the river. For Quebec City residents it is a routine crossing, not a sightseeing
Ville de Québec highlights six arrondissements as the front line of direct local services.
Where Quebec City sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Quebec City is the provincial capital first, a metro second, and it shows in the civic vocabulary. Ville de Québec organizes services through six arrondissements, posts a carte interactive for municipal resources, and keeps Espace Presse for the briefing rhythm. Le Soleil is the co-op paper locals still mean when they say the city paper. There is no STM métro mythology here; the everyday crossing people name is the Traverse Québec–Lévis, the STQ ferry that ties the capital to the south shore. That ferry pairing alone keeps Quebec City distinct from Montreal's island-and-subway map.
Heritage is an operating desk, not a souvenir shop. The patrimoine pages talk up Vision du patrimoine 2027, the Répertoire du patrimoine bâti, and Espace #PatrimoineVDQ, then invite residents to découvrir les quartiers de Québec. That is how the city teaches itself: quarter by quarter, inventory by inventory, with #AccentLocal as the blog brand for stories that stay close to home. Tourist season exists, but the municipal voice spends more ink on conservation programs and borough services than on postcard captions, which is why a capital resident and a Montrealer rarely describe home the same way. Bibliothèque de Québec and the mobility pages sit beside patrimoine in the citizen menu, so everyday errands and heritage inventory share one municipal front door.
On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Quebec City sits at rank 31 of 125. The hometown read is capital-and-heritage geography: arrondissement services, a ferry to Lévis, Le Soleil on the kitchen table, and a patrimoine file that Montreal's métro-and-mountain story cannot swap in without sounding wrong. Ask for directions here and you will hear an arrondissement or a patrimoine landmark before you hear a subway line.
Drawn from Ville de Québec, Ville de Québec patrimoine, Le Soleil, Société des traversiers du Québec.
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 Quebec City 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 Quebec City in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
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 Quebec City 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
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.
Ville de Québec highlights six arrondissements as the front line of direct local services.
Vision du patrimoine 2027 anchors the municipal heritage commitments page.
The STQ network lists the Québec–Lévis traverse among its river crossings.
#AccentLocal is the municipal blog label for local-accent storytelling on ville.quebec.qc.ca.
Municipal heritage discovery space on the city patrimoine menu. It signals that Quebec City treats conservation as a public program, not only a skyline.
Built-heritage inventory under city patrimoine services. Locals and researchers use it to track which buildings carry official weight.
STQ ferry that pairs the capital with Lévis across the river. For Quebec City residents it is a routine crossing, not a sightseeing excursion.
When Quebec City 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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