British Columbia
OpenStats City Score, ranking history, and local readings for Duncan.
City Score #95 (2022) → #105 (2025)
Duncan sits at City Score rank #105 with a standing of 47%, 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. Dropping 10 places versus 2022 (#95 → #105).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #158 of 172 (2025); indoor radon rank #108 of 117 at 41 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #49 of 172 (12.84 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 Duncan.
Documented pro, junior, university, and high-school teams tied to Duncan.
Published residential mill-rate context for Duncan.
Canada Avenue park stop in the municipal parks list, useful when someone says they are meeting downtown.
Downtown gathering block the city ties to revitalization and the daily cultural traffic of the core.
The city describes itself as the Cowichan Region hub for healthcare, retail, and cultural tourism tied to fishing, farming, forestry, and
Where Duncan sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Duncan is small on the map and large in the Cowichan Region's daily errands. City copy calls it the economic hub for healthcare, retail, professional services, and cultural tourism, with fishing, farming, forestry, and tourism still named as the valley's working mix. People who live just outside the municipal line know the standing joke baked into the website: Do I Live in the City of Duncan? North Cowichan, Ladysmith, and Lake Cowichan sit in the same Cowichan Valley Regional District orbit, so the city punches above its acreage.
Downtown is where the identity sticks. Heritage and vintage storefronts face a busy City Square, and the Totems Tour sends visitors along yellow footprints past more than forty poles, with interpretive signs and a stop by the Cowichan Valley Museum. Locals treat City of Totems as ordinary speech, not brochure fluff. Canada Avenue carries both shopping traffic and construction notices, while parks like Charles Hoey V.C. Memorial Park, McAdam Park, Rotary Park, and Friendship Square give the core room to breathe between Station Street and the residential edges.
History pages place Duncan on the traditional lands of the Cowichan First Nation, and Tourism Cowichan frames the wider valley as Quw’utsun and neighbouring Nations' territory. The Cowichan Valley Citizen covers the same geography as one newsroom beat, from craft-beer festivals to mill headlines out toward Cowichan Bay. OpenStats ranks Duncan high on City Score among Canadian communities in the 2026 set, but the street-level tell is simpler: if someone mentions yellow footprints, City Square, and Canada Avenue, they are talking about Duncan.
Drawn from City of Duncan, City of Duncan, City of Duncan, Cowichan Valley Citizen.
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.
sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities with a British Columbia Hockey League club in the OpenStats seed list ranked by regular-season points percentage. Rank 1 = highest points %. Source: Wikipedia BCHL season standings. Clubs in towns outside the seed list are omitted.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Duncan in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
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 Duncan 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.
2 editions · 2014–2015
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Municipal pages brand Duncan the City of Totems, with a yellow-footprint walking tour past more than forty poles.
The city describes itself as the Cowichan Region hub for healthcare, retail, and cultural tourism tied to fishing, farming, forestry, and visitor traffic.
Duncan sits inside the Cowichan Valley Regional District alongside North Cowichan, Ladysmith, and Lake Cowichan.
OpenStats City Score places Duncan at rank 10 among 125 communities in the 2026 composite set.
Self-guided walk marked by yellow footprints, with carver stories on signage and a route past the Cowichan Valley Museum.
Downtown gathering block the city ties to revitalization and the daily cultural traffic of the core.
Canada Avenue park stop in the municipal parks list, useful when someone says they are meeting downtown.
Sports-ready park paired with Rotary Park in the city's adopted master plan.
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