St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
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Newfoundland and Labrador · Civic arena

St. John's

St. John's drinking water hardness is 146 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.

Civic arena · hometown HUD

St. John's

Census_metropolitan_area213k pop
56XP
#93

#93 of 343

56% City Score XP

DirectSurface
City Score XP

7/8 pillars on the board

56%#93

Decade trail

St. John's 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.

St. John's drinking water

Direct municipal reading

Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.

Hardness
146 mg/L
hard
pH
6.8999999999999995
Lead
0.2 μg/L

Full St. John's water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Torbay · vs Corner BrookHardness guide

Watershed to tap · system map

How St. John's's water works

Open full map

Source, treatment, and distribution for St. John's from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.

Local numbers for St. John's

Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for St. John's.

How St. John's scores

St. John's sits at City Score rank #93 with a standing of 56%, 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 #152 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #189 of 343 at 146 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #91 of 343 (11.77 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.

#93
Arena rank (of 343)
56%
City Score
7
Pillars observed

Arena loadout

Topic XP bars

Arena rank #93 of 343

City Score

7/8 pillars · main XP bar

56%#93
Drinking water

Rank #223

65%
Building permits

Rank #152

56%
Internet

Rank #74

79%
Radon

Rank #189

55%
Hazards

No placement

Property tax

Rank #91

27%

Achievements

Direct municipal readingSurface water supply

Hometown notes

Archive

Earlier years: 2026 · 2025 · 2024 · 2023

St. John's in brief

St. John's keeps one eye on Quidi Vidi Lake every summer, because the Royal St. John's Regatta can turn an ordinary weekday into Regatta Day. The Captain of the Course watches the weather, the city posts holiday schedules, and Telegram headlines ask whether Wednesday will be a holiday. When the boats finally race, the shoreline talk is as local as it gets: postponements, online streams, and the relief of a settled date after days of waiting.

Away from race week, the city calendar leans downtown and into the parks. The Downtown Pedestrian Mall opens for the season, and Music @ moves free concerts through Harbourside Park, Bannerman Park, and Bowring Park. Traffic advisories still name Portugal Cove Road, Pitts Memorial Drive, and Blackmarsh Road as growth and construction corridors. Metrobus and Engage St. John's sit in the everyday toolkit for getting around and weighing in on projects. Summer evenings can mean a free band in a named park more often than a ticketed show.

Neighbourhood names show up when the beat shifts: Southlands in residential coverage, east-end arterials when buses and cars share tight space. Pitts Memorial Drive and Blackmarsh Road keep showing up in construction and housing notes, the kind of street names locals use as shorthand for which side of town is busy this month. On OpenStats City Score for 2026, St. John's sits at rank 91 of 125. The hometown frame stays Regatta weather, downtown walking season, and the park concert circuit before any national ranking table.

Drawn from City of St. John's, The Telegram / SaltWire NL, CBC Newfoundland and Labrador.

City Score over time

City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.

0%25%50%75%100%2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
OpenStats City Score

Rankings for St. John's

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 Broadband Download Speeds

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

#74
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 600.8

Construction · OpenStats

OpenStats Building Permit Value

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

#152
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 523600868

Composite · OpenStats

OpenStats City Score

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

#93
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.557

Safety · OpenStats

OpenStats Crime Severity Index

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

#170
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 79.22

Water · OpenStats

OpenStats Drinking Water Hardness

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

#223
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 146

Health · OpenStats

OpenStats Highest Indoor Radon

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

#189
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 146

Growth · OpenStats

OpenStats Population Growth

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

#127
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.015321378135083746

Property tax · OpenStats

OpenStats Residential Mill Rates

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

#91
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 11.765569086251475

Worth knowing in St. John's

Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.

  • Regatta Day can become a municipal holiday once race organizers lock the weather call.

    City of St. John's

  • Music @ stages free summer concerts at Harbourside Park, Bannerman Park, and Bowring Park.

    City of St. John's

  • The Downtown Pedestrian Mall is a seasonal city feature called out on the municipal homepage.

    City of St. John's

  • Engage St. John's is the city's online space for project feedback and public ideas.

    City of St. John's

Places to see

Quidi Vidi Lake

Regatta shoreline where race-eve weather talk gathers before the Royal St. John's Regatta. It is the geographic cue for Regatta Day conversations across the city.

Harbourside Park

Downtown park stop on the Music @ concert series. Pair it with Bannerman Park and Bowring Park for the full free-summer loop.

Downtown Pedestrian Mall

Seasonal pedestrian stretch that turns downtown walking into an event of its own. The city posts opening dates and programming each summer.

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When St. John's 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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