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 25 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.

Civic arena · hometown HUD

St. John's

Census_metropolitan_area213k pop
60XP
#32

#32 of 343

60% City Score XP

DirectSurface
City Score XP

6/8 pillars on the board

60%#32

Decade trail

St. John's packs 6 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
25 mg/L
soft
pH
6.9
Lead
0.2 μg/L

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

Watershed to tap · system map

How St. John's's water works

Source, treatment, and distribution for St. John's from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.

Local numbers for St. John's

Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.

How St. John's scores

St. John's sits at City Score rank #32 with a standing of 60%, from 6 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: indoor radon rank #196 of 327 at 95 Bq/m³ survey mean. Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.

In the 2025 City Score edition, St. John's carries a City Score standing of 60% (rank #32 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 7 points above the Newfoundland and Labrador peer average across 15 ranked cities. Within Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's ranks #3 of 15 on City Score.

The strongest signal in the current chart is drinking-water hardness (standing 97%, rank #333 of 343, raw score 25). The weakest observed pillar is police-reported crime severity (standing 45%, rank #46 of 102, 79.2 CSI). Crime severity uses the Statistics Canada police-service CSI mapped to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (table 35100026), not a regional proxy.

Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 25 mg/L as CaCO₃ for St. John's. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.

#32
Arena rank (of 343)
60%
City Score
6
Pillars observed

Arena loadout

Topic XP bars

Arena rank #32 of 343

City Score

6/8 pillars · main XP bar

60%#32
Drinking water

Pillar avg · hardness #333

83%
Building permits

No placement

—
Internet

Rank #160

54%
Radon

Rank #196

60%
Hazards

Rank #264

77%
Property tax

No placement

—

St. John's pillar standing

Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.

TaxPermitsNetRadonWaterHazardsGrowthCrime

Source: OpenStats composite / study editions

City Score standing trend

Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).

Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Source: OpenStats composite timeseries

Achievements

Direct municipal readingSurface water supply

Hometown notes

City profile

Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.

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 2025, St. John's sits at rank 46 of 343. 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 household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#160
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 558.6

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). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); 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

#32
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.602

Safety · OpenStats

OpenStats Crime Severity Index

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index at police-service grain (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01 for British Columbia). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Cities without a police-service match are not listed; the safety pillar scores at median standing on City Score. Hometown pages name the police service and reference year.

CSI from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (2025, Table 35-10-0026-01).

10 editions · 2016–2025

#46
Latest · 2025 · of 102
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

#333
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 25

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

#196
Latest · 2025 · of 327
Score 94.5

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

Hazards · OpenStats

OpenStats Seismic Hazard (PGA)

OpenStats

Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#264
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.033

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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