British Columbia · Civic arena
Vancouver drinking water hardness is 113 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#204 of 343
48% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Vancouver 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 Vancouver water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs West Kelowna · vs Port MoodyHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Vancouver from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Vancouver.
Vancouver sits at City Score rank #204 with a standing of 48%, 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 61 places versus 2022 (#143 → #204).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #204 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #159 of 343 at 163 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #104 of 343 (11.39 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 #204 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #282
Rank #204
Rank #54
Rank #159
No placement
Rank #104
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Vancouver.
Stadium that anchors Whitecaps and public-asset conversations on the local sports and business desks. Ownership talk and match-day
Historic downtown strip that keeps showing up in Sun local-food coverage. Restaurant talk still uses Gastown as a place name,
TransLink describes three SkyTrain lines from Downtown: Expo, Millennium, and Canada Line to YVR and Richmond.
Where Vancouver sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Vancouver organizes itself as a mainland metro first. TransLink's SkyTrain lines do the orientation work: Expo Line out through Burnaby, New Westminster, and Surrey; Millennium Line across East Vancouver toward Port Moody and Coquitlam; Canada Line down to Richmond and YVR. Waterfront Station is the downtown rail hinge people name without a map. Compass Cards cover the fare talk, and Broadway Subway construction keeps the Broadway–City Hall corridor in a permanent state of temporary bus stops.
Regional life sits under Metro Vancouver rules as often as city slogans. Stage 2 water restrictions and air-quality notices arrive as regional services, not tourist brochure weather. On the local desk, the Vancouver Sun keeps Gastown restaurants, heat-wave cooling maps, and below-market housing fights on the same front as Canucks and Whitecaps copy. B.C. Place shows up whenever stadium ownership or public-asset talk returns. SeaWheeze brings a half marathon and Sunset Festival into the summer calendar without pretending the city is quiet.
North Shore swim clubs chasing pool time are a reminder that Vancouver's story spills across bridges and inlets, not ferry schedules. Compass Card reloads and Expo Line weekend disruptions are ordinary commute talk here. This is a SkyTrain-and-stadium coastal metro: rail lines, regional water rules, and mainland sports brands. On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Vancouver sits at rank 4 of 125. Rankings aside, the hometown tell is Expo, Millennium, and Canada Line language across Metro Vancouver, not hanging baskets and Mile 0.
Drawn from TransLink, TransLink SkyTrain, Metro Vancouver, Vancouver Sun.
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
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Average rent for purpose-built 2-bedroom apartments (all tenants) from CMHC Rental Market Survey. Rank 1 = lowest average rent among covered CMAs.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Vancouver in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Purpose-built rental apartment vacancy rate from CMHC Rental Market Survey (October). Rank 1 = highest vacancy (most available rental stock among covered CMAs).
2 editions · 2024–2025
Housing
Demographia / Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Canadian subset of Demographia median multiple (median house price / median household income). Rank 1 = most affordable (lowest median multiple) among Canadian major markets in the international survey.
3 editions · 2024–2026
Livability
Economist Intelligence Unit
Ranks ~173 cities on stability, healthcare, culture & environment, education, and infrastructure. Full dataset is paid; OpenStats stores only ranks and scores published in free press releases and news coverage.
4 editions · 2023–2026
Livability
The Globe and Mail
2023 data partnership with Environics Analytics ranking 439 Canadian communities on ten livability categories.
Single edition · 2023
Only one published edition places Vancouver in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
2 editions · 2019–2021
Quality of life
Mercer
Expat-oriented quality of living ranking across 39 factors in 10 categories. OpenStats stores Canadian cities named in free Mercer press releases (typically top-25 highlights), not the full paid ranking.
2 editions · 2023–2024
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
5 editions · 2014–2018
Housing
National Bank of Canada Economics and Strategy
Ranked by Mortgage Payment as a Percentage of Income (MPPI) on a representative home. Rank 1 = highest MPPI (least affordable). Free quarterly Housing Affordability Monitor tables.
2 editions · 2025–2026
Quality of life
Numbeo
Crowd-sourced composite Quality of Life Index. Historical snapshots are free on Numbeo ranking pages; OpenStats cites Canadian cities from those public pages (cite_only). Higher index scores are better; ranks are global position on the snapshot page.
3 editions · 2024–2026
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.
TransLink describes three SkyTrain lines from Downtown: Expo, Millennium, and Canada Line to YVR and Richmond.
Waterfront Station appears as the shared downtown endpoint across SkyTrain line maps.
Broadway Subway construction is a standing TransLink alert that relocates stops around Broadway–City Hall.
Metro Vancouver posts Stage 2 water restrictions as regional rules, including lawn-watering bans.
Downtown SkyTrain hinge where Expo, Millennium, and Canada Line riders meet the core. It is the station name locals use when giving directions without listing every branch.
Historic downtown strip that keeps showing up in Sun local-food coverage. Restaurant talk still uses Gastown as a place name, not a theme-park label.
Stadium that anchors Whitecaps and public-asset conversations on the local sports and business desks. Ownership talk and match-day geography both land here.
Active construction zone near Broadway–City Hall where TransLink warns about relocated bus stops and traffic changes. Commute planning starts with that caveat.
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