British Columbia · Civic arena
Richmond drinking water hardness is 98 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#277 of 343
42% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Richmond 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 Richmond water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Colwood · vs Prince GeorgeHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Richmond from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Richmond.
Richmond sits at City Score rank #277 with a standing of 42%, 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 149 places versus 2022 (#128 → #277).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #108 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #111 of 343 at 198 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #168 of 343 (10.09 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 #277 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #313
Rank #108
Rank #243
Rank #111
No placement
Rank #168
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Richmond.
Middle Arm landmark with Riverside Plaza as the big outdoor gathering space. It anchors the city-centre waterfront opposite Steveston's
Open Steveston waterfront for ships, fishing boats, and long views. Pair it with Imperial Landing when you want boardwalk and harbour
Municipal flood pages put Richmond at about one metre above sea level, with 49 km of dikes and dozens of pump stations.
Where Richmond sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Richmond lives on Fraser River islands only about a metre above the sea, so flood talk is not theory here. City pages lead with 49 kilometres of dikes, pumps, and a Dike Master Plan aimed at King Tides, freshets, and rising water. Cyclists treat the West Dyke Trail and the rest of the perimeter path like a ring road with better views, and trail maps even sketch a full island loop of roughly 47.5 km if you have the legs for it. Terra Nova Rural Park opens the west dyke to estuary birding, while Sea Island trail routes keep airport-island geography in the same conversation as Middle Arm parks and City Centre plazas.
Steveston Village still reads as its own place at the South Arm mouth: a working harbour older than the modern city name, with Garry Point Park, Imperial Landing, Britannia Shipyard Park, and the Gulf of Georgia Cannery drawing weekend traffic. Fish come off the boats; Salmon Festival and the Maritime Festival pack the calendar when summer hits. Up the Middle Arm, the Richmond Olympic Oval and Middle Arm Waterfront Park give City Centre a riverside plaza scale that feels different from the fishing village tip, with Riverside Plaza built for large outdoor gatherings.
Local news treats YVR delays as neighbourhood news, which tells you how tightly airport island and everyday Richmond schedules connect. Roadwork, power outages, and emergency-operations funding show up on the same beat as harbour markets. On OpenStats City Score for 2026, Richmond sits at rank 8 of 125. Locals still introduce the place with dykes, Steveston harbour, and the Fraser first.
Drawn from City of Richmond - Flood Protection, City of Richmond - About the Waterfront, Tourism Richmond - Steveston Village, Richmond News.
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
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
Single edition · 2021
Only one published edition places Richmond 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
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Municipal flood pages put Richmond at about one metre above sea level, with 49 km of dikes and dozens of pump stations.
Steveston is framed as older than the city of Richmond and still runs a working fishing harbour at the South Arm mouth.
Riverside Plaza at the Richmond Olympic Oval is designed as a festival place for thousands of people on the Middle Arm.
Perimeter trail maps invite a full island loop of about 47.5 km for cyclists who want every waterfront angle.
Working harbour village with seafood off the docks, heritage sites, and Canada Day Salmon Festival energy. Locals treat it as Richmond's southwest personality.
Open Steveston waterfront for ships, fishing boats, and long views. Pair it with Imperial Landing when you want boardwalk and harbour activity.
Middle Arm landmark with Riverside Plaza as the big outdoor gathering space. It anchors the city-centre waterfront opposite Steveston's fishing tip.
Dyke-top recreation route that doubles as flood infrastructure geography. Terra Nova Rural Park is a favourite trailhead for estuary views.
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