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
#329 of 343
38% City Score XP
5/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Sydney packs 5 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. This page uses a regional estimate — open the water atlas for method notes.
Full Sydney water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Truro · vs New GlasgowHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Sydney from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
Sports
66 GP · 62 pts · Compare CHL cities
Sydney sits at City Score rank #329 with a standing of 38%, from 5 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 58 places versus 2022 (#271 → #329).
Latest owned placements: residential mill rate rank #2 of 57 (19.44 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Among Canadian cities on the hub, Sydney carries a City Score standing of 38% (rank #329 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 11 points below the Nova Scotia peer average across 9 ranked cities. Within Nova Scotia, Sydney ranks #9 of 9 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is broadband download (ISED seed tier) (standing 65%, rank #120 of 343, raw score 757). The weakest observed pillar is property tax (standing 4%, rank #2 of 57).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 270 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Sydney. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #329 of 343
5/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #20
No placement
Rank #120
No placement
Rank #195
Rank #2
Sydney pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
Source: OpenStats composite / study editions
City Score standing trend
Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).
Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Source: OpenStats composite timeseries
Achievements
· Property tax
Verified direct property-tax rows cover 57 cities in Ontario, five in Nova Scotia, and Vancouver in BC. Elliot Lake leads the Ontario direct set at 23.21 mills. Markham posts 7.00 mills at the low end.
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.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
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 2025, Sydney ranks 278 of 343. 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.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Sydney without copying a province, CMA, or another city. The safety pillar scores at median standing (50%) on City Score, the same rule used for other missing pillars.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Canadian Hockey League (OHL, WHL, QMJHL) member cities ranked by regular-season points percentage. One CHL team maps to each OpenStats hometown slug; standings snapshot is curated from public league tables.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Sydney in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
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). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); 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
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
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Hometowns with a mapped junior hockey franchise ranked by local sports depth: league tier (CHL member leagues = 1.0, MHL = 0.65) multiplied by regular-season points percentage. Surfaces cities with both a franchise and a strong standings year; not a City Score pillar input.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Sydney 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 (education levies are shown on property-tax pages but not added here). Rank 1 is the highest rate. Atlas seed and published municipal rows anchor the panel; off-panel tax years (e.g. 2026) carry across 2016–2025; remaining gaps follow provincial paths.
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.
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.
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