Ontario · Civic arena
Vaughan drinking water hardness is 156 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#95 of 343
56% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Vaughan 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 Vaughan water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs St. Marys · vs RenfrewHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Vaughan from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Vaughan.
Vaughan sits at City Score rank #95 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. Rising 45 places versus 2022 (#140 → #95).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #223 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #238 of 343 at 106 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #108 of 343 (11.35 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 #95 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #207
Rank #223
Rank #146
Rank #238
No placement
Rank #108
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Vaughan.
First VMC public park with skating, splashpad, and playground gear that finally gives the downtown towers a square to claim. Locals treat
The large park rising on New Park Place beside the office towers. When finished it is meant to be the VMC’s main urban lawn for events
Cortellucci Square was the first public park to open in the VMC, with a skating loop and splashpad on Maplecrete Road.
Where Vaughan sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Ask someone for downtown Vaughan and they will likely point you to the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, the VMC in city shorthand. Council treats it as the financial and cultural centre still rising around the VMC Subway Station and SmartVMC Bus Terminal. Parks are catching up to the towers. Cortellucci Square was the first public park to open there, with a winter skating loop and splashpad that make Maplecrete Road feel like a neighbourhood square. Millway Avenue Linear Park adds greenspace, a playground, and a basketball court a short walk away. North Urban Park is the bigger piece under construction on New Park Place, meant to stretch across multiple blocks once the phases land.
Infrastructure talk in the VMC still names Jane Street for hydro and sanitary work, Black Creek for renewal design, and Edgeley Pond and Park for stormwater space moving through approvals. Highway 400 shows up when overpass studies surface. Outside the core, Vaughan Celebrates Concerts in the Park fills summer Wednesdays, and the Order of Vaughan keeps civic recognition on the calendar. MacMillan Farm sits in the heritage file as a city master-plan site rather than a brochure stop.
York Region coverage files Vaughan stories under the local Citizen desk, but the hometown frame is municipal: a downtown being assembled in public, park by park. On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Vaughan sits at rank 13 of 125. Rankings aside, locals recognize the VMC acronym, the subway-and-bus pair, and the sense that Jane Street and Black Creek are part of how the new centre gets finished.
Drawn from City of Vaughan, City of Vaughan VMC update, VMC Parks and Wayfinding Master Plan, Vaughan Citizen / YorkRegion.com.
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
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 Vaughan in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
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.
City project pages treat the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre as Vaughan’s downtown core, usually shortened to the VMC.
Cortellucci Square was the first public park to open in the VMC, with a skating loop and splashpad on Maplecrete Road.
North Urban Park is planned as a multi-block greenspace a short walk from the VMC Subway Station and SmartVMC Bus Terminal.
Vaughan Celebrates Concerts in the Park is the free Wednesday summer series on the city calendar.
First VMC public park with skating, splashpad, and playground gear that finally gives the downtown towers a square to claim. Locals treat it as proof the centre is becoming a neighbourhood.
Slimmer VMC greenspace with a custom basketball court and accessible playground near Interchange Way. It is the everyday play strip between condo blocks.
The large park rising on New Park Place beside the office towers. When finished it is meant to be the VMC’s main urban lawn for events and open play.
When Vaughan 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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