Newfoundland and Labrador
OpenStats City Score, ranking history, and local readings for St. John's.
City Score #26 (2022) → #15 (2025)
St. John's sits at City Score rank #15 with a standing of 62%, from 8 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 11 places versus 2022 (#26 → #15).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #49 of 172 (2025); indoor radon rank #73 of 117 at 95 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #71 of 172 (11.77 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Open each topic for St. John's.
Documented pro, junior, university, and high-school teams tied to St. John's.
Published residential mill-rate context for St. John's.
Regatta shoreline where race-eve weather talk gathers before the Royal St. John's Regatta. It is the geographic cue for Regatta Day
Seasonal pedestrian stretch that turns downtown walking into an event of its own. The city posts opening dates and programming each summer.
Music @ stages free summer concerts at Harbourside Park, Bannerman Park, and Bowring Park.
Where St. John's sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
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 2026, St. John's sits at rank 91 of 125. 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 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
sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by weighted count of documented local teams (pro, junior, university, high-school hubs). Rank 1 = deepest documented sports footprint among covered seed cities. Not a claim about on-field success. See sports methodology for weights and gaps.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places St. John's in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
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
Hazards · OpenStats
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
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
3 editions · 2015–2018
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.
Regatta Day can become a municipal holiday once race organizers lock the weather call.
Music @ stages free summer concerts at Harbourside Park, Bannerman Park, and Bowring Park.
The Downtown Pedestrian Mall is a seasonal city feature called out on the municipal homepage.
Engage St. John's is the city's online space for project feedback and public ideas.
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.
Downtown park stop on the Music @ concert series. Pair it with Bannerman Park and Bowring Park for the full free-summer loop.
Seasonal pedestrian stretch that turns downtown walking into an event of its own. The city posts opening dates and programming each summer.
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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