Population growth ranking reset: Lloydminster tops the 2025 board

A single year can reorder the population growth board without warning. On the 2025 edition, Lloydminster surged 94 ranks to claim first place at about 5.0 percent annual growth. That is the widest year-over-year jump on the pillar and enough to push several familiar names down the table even when their own rates stayed strong.

OpenStats scores growth from Statistics Canada CSD population estimates across 172 cities. The pillar feeds directly into City Score as one of eight equal-weight inputs. When Lloydminster, Woodstock, or Hawkesbury climb dozens of ranks in one edition, composite standings can move even if water hardness, radon, or mill rates barely budge.

Lloydminster at the tip

Lloydminster sits on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border with a split provincial footprint. Its 5.00 percent rate leads the national table by a full half-point over second place. The city was outside the top 25 a year earlier; the 94-rank climb is the headline of this reshuffle. Readers on the Lloydminster hometown page will see that growth rank beside crime severity and permit rows that tell a more mixed local story.

Alberta ring cities

Airdrie holds second at 4.34 percent, a familiar satellite pace north of Calgary. Spruce Grove ranks third at 4.16 percent after a 22-rank year-over-year gain. Both communities already score well on the composite: Airdrie sits eighth nationally on City Score and Spruce Grove 22nd. Strong growth here reinforces their ring-city identity rather than inventing it.

Brooks (3.40 percent, rank 9) and Leduc (3.01 percent, rank 13) keep more Alberta rows inside the top 15. Calgary lands 23rd at 2.53 percent, still top-quartile nationally but well behind the capital region's fastest suburbs. The pattern matches what permit desks already see: new households land in ring communities before the core city's percentage rate catches up.

Ontario midsize climbers

Woodstock rose 40 ranks to fifth at 3.68 percent. Hawkesbury gained 58 places to seventh at 3.51 percent. Both are midsize Ontario communities where a few thousand new residents can swing the percentage sharply. Woodstock's permit and mill-rate rows sit on separate pillars; Hawkesbury's water hardness rank is high on its own atlas board. Growth alone does not guarantee a composite jump, but these cities now start the growth pillar from a much stronger position.

Edmonton: strong rate, softer rank

Edmonton posted 3.38 percent growth, a solid large-metro pace, yet fell six ranks to 10th on the pillar. Six faster cities simply passed it: Lloydminster, Airdrie, Spruce Grove, Moncton, Woodstock, and Squamish all rank above Edmonton on rate alone. Edmonton still leads the composite at 0.721. The growth pillar is one input among eight; a six-rank slip on growth does not dethrone a city when permits, broadband, and other rows stay near the top.

Growth inside City Score

Population growth is scored 0 to 1 within each annual edition, then averaged with seven other pillars. A city that jumps from rank 95 to rank 1 on growth gains a meaningful bump on that single input. Composite rank still depends on radon, water, mills, permits, broadband, seismic hazard, and crime severity moving in tandem or against each other.

Lloydminster illustrates the split: first on growth, 116th on composite after its own 36-rank composite gain. Airdrie and Spruce Grove pair top-tier growth with top-25 composite scores. Check each hometown page for Rising and Dropping badges on the composite; the growth pillar reshuffle is often the first clue before those badges appear.

Moncton ranks fourth at 3.70 percent, the Atlantic outlier inside the national top five. Steinbach and Winkler keep Manitoba represented in the top dozen. The reshuffle is national, not a single-province story.

Open the full population growth study to sort all 172 cities, filter by province, and compare rates beside permit value and City Score on the same screen. Rates are annual CSD estimates for the 2025 edition, not multi-year forecasts.