New Brunswick · Civic arena
Saint John drinking water hardness is 186 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#118 of 343
54% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Saint John 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 Saint John water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Moncton · vs RiverviewHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Saint John from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Saint John.
Saint John sits at City Score rank #118 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. Dropping 65 places versus 2022 (#53 → #118).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #278 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #273 of 343 at 86 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #174 of 343 (9.98 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 #118 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #151
Rank #278
Rank #114
Rank #273
No placement
Rank #174
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Saint John.
A harbourside walk that keeps Fundy views inside an ordinary downtown outing, especially when paired with City Market.
Saint John's big in-city park, complete with Lily Lake event days and the Rockwood Reservoir file that keeps park infrastructure
Reversing Falls Rapids form where the St. John River meets Fundy tide, with lookouts at Wolastoq Park and Fallsview Park.
Where Saint John sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Saint Johners live with a water report that other cities would treat as theatre. The city homepage posts St. John River levels beside Bay of Fundy tide heights, and slack water is real schedule talk, not poetry. Where the river meets the bay, Reversing Falls Rapids put on the twice-daily collision locals point visitors toward from Wolastoq Park and Fallsview Park. Harbour Passage keeps people walking the harbour edge, while Irving Nature Park pulls the same Fundy habit out onto coastal trails. Even ordinary weeks feel tidal because the city dashboard refuses to let the bay become background.
Inland from the falls, Rockwood Park is the oversized backyard: trails, Lily Lake festival days, and a Rockwood Reservoir rehabilitation project that turns park infrastructure into city news. Downtown still runs through City Market and the denser streets Saint Johners treat as the everyday core. Saint John Transit covers the commute map, Glenn Carpenter Center shows up on recreation calendars, and New Brunswick Day is the August holiday that rewrites service hours. Discover Saint John packages the edge as Fundy tourism, but the municipal dashboard makes clear the tides are also ordinary civic weather.
On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Saint John sits at rank 107 of 125. The hometown story is older and wetter than a composite score: watch the falls reverse, check the Fundy clock, and keep Rockwood on the weekend list. Swap those referents for another harbour city and the piece stops sounding like Saint John at all.
Drawn from City of Saint John, Parks and Recreation, Parks and Trails, Discover Saint John, Bay of Fundy, CBC New Brunswick.
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
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.
The city dashboard treats Bay of Fundy tide height and St. John River level as standing public conditions beside ordinary service news.
Reversing Falls Rapids form where the St. John River meets Fundy tide, with lookouts at Wolastoq Park and Fallsview Park.
Municipal parks pages say Saint Johners use more than 2,200 acres of natural park space and about 56 kilometres of trails.
Rockwood Reservoir Rehabilitation Project appears in city spotlights alongside arena ice bookings and New Brunswick Day hours.
The hometown water show at the river mouth. Locals send guests to Wolastoq Park or Fallsview Park and time the visit to the tide table.
Saint John's big in-city park, complete with Lily Lake event days and the Rockwood Reservoir file that keeps park infrastructure in the news.
A harbourside walk that keeps Fundy views inside an ordinary downtown outing, especially when paired with City Market.
Coastal trails on the Fundy side for days when Rockwood's forests are not enough salt air.
When Saint John 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.
No spam. Unsubscribe with one reply.
