Northwest Territories
OpenStats City Score, ranking history, and local readings for Yellowknife.
City Score #121 (2022) → #72 (2025)
Yellowknife sits at City Score rank #72 with a standing of 52%, 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 49 places versus 2022 (#121 → #72).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #167 of 172 (2025); residential mill rate rank #163 of 172 (7.28 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 Yellowknife.
Documented pro, junior, university, and high-school teams tied to Yellowknife.
Published residential mill-rate context for Yellowknife.
The heritage waterfront on Yellowknife Bay, home to Wildcat Café and the old floatplane shore. Old Town Ramble and Ride still pulls the
A bush-plane landmark perched near Yellowknife Airport. Locals treat it as the hello sign for a flying town.
City aurora pages point to Northern Lighthouses around town that signal when active northern lights are in the evening forecast.
Where Yellowknife sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Yellowknife is a capital on Great Slave Lake, and the shoreline still orders the story. Old Town holds the heritage waterfront, from Wildcat Café to the old floatplane base, while Ragged Ass Road, Peace River Flats, and Back Bay keep names that sound like nowhere else in Canada. Newer civic life gathers at Somba K'e Civic Plaza and Somba K'e Park, where Sounds of Summer puts free Friday music on the lawn and Fireweed Studio keeps a seasonal craft cabin by City Hall. Across town, Kam Lake is the employment and warehouse belt the City is planning to expand. Parks here often sit on Canadian Shield granite, so a playground visit can turn into a rock scramble without leaving city limits.
Winter is not a side note. The City leans on clear nights and aurora season, mid-November through early April, and dots the streets with Northern Lighthouses that tip you when the lights are active. Summers swing the other way, with midnight sun that refuses to log off and festivals such as Folk on the Rocks in the local cultural vocabulary. Cabin Radio still sends people to Old Town Ramble and Ride when the floatplane shore wants a parade of bikes and boots. The Bristol Freighter near Yellowknife Airport stays the bush-pilot welcome marker, and Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre plus Yellowknives Dene First Nation links keep the deeper northern history in reach.
OpenStats has no City Score placement for Yellowknife in the current datapack. The hometown read is northern on purpose: lake ice and aurora alerts, Old Town floatplanes, Somba K'e concerts, and granite under the swing sets.
Drawn from City of Yellowknife, City of Yellowknife culture and heritage, City of Yellowknife weather and aurora, City of Yellowknife trails and parks, Cabin Radio.
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
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 Yellowknife 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
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
City aurora pages point to Northern Lighthouses around town that signal when active northern lights are in the evening forecast.
Somba K'e Civic Plaza hosts the Sounds of Summer free Friday concert series through late August.
Many playgrounds and parks are built into Canadian Shield granite, so rock climbing sits beside the swing sets.
The Bristol Freighter near Yellowknife Airport is listed as the city's Welcome Monument for bush pilots.
The heritage waterfront on Yellowknife Bay, home to Wildcat Café and the old floatplane shore. Old Town Ramble and Ride still pulls the neighbourhood into the annual calendar.
Civic lawn near City Hall for summer concerts and Fireweed Studio season. Bring a chair on Fridays when Sounds of Summer is on.
A bush-plane landmark perched near Yellowknife Airport. Locals treat it as the hello sign for a flying town.
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