Nova Scotia · Civic arena
Sydney drinking water hardness is 270 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#190 of 343
49% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Sydney 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 Sydney water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs New Glasgow · vs BridgewaterHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Sydney from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Sydney.
Sydney sits at City Score rank #190 with a standing of 49%, 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 95 places versus 2022 (#95 → #190).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #59 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #225 of 343 at 120 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #130 of 343 (10.89 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 #190 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #19
Rank #59
Rank #61
Rank #225
No placement
Rank #130
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Sydney.
The municipal gathering ground for big CBRM days. When the region wants a shared outdoor stage, this is the park name that lands
A Sydney-area neighbourhood that keeps its own byline in police and fire briefs. Locals treat the name as a place, not a direction.
Transit Cape Breton sells a flat one-way fare and posts community-specific reroutes when Dominion service shifts toward Reserve Mines.
Where Sydney sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Sydney sits inside the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, and that CBRM framing is how daily life gets organized. You call 311 for the ordinary municipal stuff, ride Transit Cape Breton when the bus is the plan, and watch route notices name places like Dominion and Reserve Mines the way a local map would. Open Hearth Park still hosts the big civic days, including the Canada Day gathering CBRM puts on the calendar. Cape Breton Regional Police Service is the badge name on the public-safety pages, another reminder that Sydney's services are regional by design. Northside talk covers the harbour's other shore, from Northside Business Park planning to race cards at Northside Downs in North Sydney.
Neighbourhoods keep their own names in the paper. Whitney Pier shows up as Whitney Pier, not a vague south-end label. Membertou is the neighbouring Mi'kmaw community whose powwows and gatherings pull people across the municipal line. Summer still brings Swim the Canal into the Cape Breton sports chatter, and baseball fans track the Sydney Major Sooners when Little League gets loud. Hockey talk leans to the Cape Breton Eagles. Makin' Waves Festival sits on the recreation list for when the waterfront wants a named summer beat. Housing strategy news from CBRM also lands on the municipal front, so planning talk is part of the local weather.
On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Sydney ranks 111 of 125. Rankings aside, the hometown read is a harbour city that answers to CBRM, keeps Transit Cape Breton as the bus brand, and still gathers at Open Hearth Park when the municipality wants everyone in one place.
Drawn from Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Transit Cape Breton, Cape Breton Post.
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
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
CBRM leads resident help with Call 311 and a chat prompt on the municipal home page.
Transit Cape Breton sells a flat one-way fare and posts community-specific reroutes when Dominion service shifts toward Reserve Mines.
Open Hearth Park is the named site for CBRM's Canada Day celebration.
Northside Downs keeps harness racing on the Northside calendar in local sports coverage.
The municipal gathering ground for big CBRM days. When the region wants a shared outdoor stage, this is the park name that lands on the notice.
Harness racing on the Northside that still earns sports-front space. A short drive from Sydney proper, and a place locals name without a tourist brochure.
A Sydney-area neighbourhood that keeps its own byline in police and fire briefs. Locals treat the name as a place, not a direction.
When Sydney 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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