Nova Scotia
OpenStats City Score, ranking history, and local readings for Halifax.
City Score #35 (2022) → #47 (2025)
Halifax sits at City Score rank #47 with a standing of 56%, 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 12 places versus 2022 (#35 → #47).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #19 of 172 (2025); indoor radon rank #11 of 117 at 195 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #84 of 172 (11.10 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 Halifax.
Documented pro, junior, university, and high-school teams tied to Halifax.
Published residential mill-rate context for Halifax.
Historic trail system highlighted on HRM parks and trails pages. It is a named outdoor corridor for walkers who want a Dartmouth-side green
Redevelopment district with construction already underway in municipal planning materials. It sits with Centre Plan language about growth
Bayers Road Transit Priority Corridor work is framed as a multi-year traffic change for Haligonians.
Where Halifax sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Halifax Regional Municipality is big enough that people talk in sides and corridors. Haligonians on the peninsula watch Bayers Road through years of Transit Priority Corridor work, while Dartmouth keeps its own summer soundtrack with the Dartmouth Sunshine Series at Dartmouth Ferry Terminal Park and Sullivan's Pond Park. Bedford shows up in metro beats, and Beechville Lakeside Timberlea sits in suburban plan and community-centre conversations. The harbour is not a postcard line here; it is how you place yourself in HRM before you even name a street.
Summer still pulls people outdoors. Natal Day fills the civic weekend calendar, the Halifax Busker Festival works the waterfront, and the Clam Harbour Beach Sandcastle Competition brings the region to the sand. Parks pages point walkers to the Shubie Canal Greenway, and planning desks keep Centre Plan, the Suburban Plan, Cogswell District, and Young Street Lands in the public feed. The CARE Team on the peninsula is another Halifax-specific shorthand: an alternative response when police, fire, or EHS is not the right first call. Those names travel farther than generic city branding ever could.
On OpenStats City Score for 2026, Halifax sits at rank 36 of 125, with strong building-permit and mill-rate placements in the datapack. The local frame stays peninsula and Dartmouth, Bayers Road patience, and waterfront festival weeks. Growth talk is Centre Plan and suburban refresh, not generic boom language. Young Street Lands and Cogswell keep the planning map feeling unfinished in a way Haligonians expect from a region still writing its next blocks.
Drawn from Halifax Regional Municipality, HRM - Regional and community planning, SaltWire Halifax, CBC Nova Scotia.
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
sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities with a Canadian Hockey League club ranked by regular-season points percentage (best club wins if several). Rank 1 = highest points %. Built from CHL standings and Wikipedia season pages. Cities without a CHL club are omitted.
8 editions · 2017–2025
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 Halifax 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
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Average rent for purpose-built 2-bedroom apartments (all tenants) from CMHC Rental Market Survey. Rank 1 = lowest average rent among covered CMAs.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Halifax in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Purpose-built rental apartment vacancy rate from CMHC Rental Market Survey (October). Rank 1 = highest vacancy (most available rental stock among covered CMAs).
2 editions · 2024–2025
Livability
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
Single edition · 2021
Only one published edition places Halifax in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Quality of life
Numbeo
Crowd-sourced composite Quality of Life Index. Historical snapshots are free on Numbeo ranking pages; OpenStats cites Canadian cities from those public pages (cite_only). Higher index scores are better; ranks are global position on the snapshot page.
3 editions · 2024–2026
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.
Bayers Road Transit Priority Corridor work is framed as a multi-year traffic change for Haligonians.
Dartmouth Sunshine Series splits summer concerts between Ferry Terminal Park and Sullivan's Pond Park.
The Clam Harbour Beach Sandcastle Competition is a municipal beach tradition with children's and adult categories.
Centre Plan and the Suburban Plan are the main land-use languages for urban and suburban growth debates.
Historic trail system highlighted on HRM parks and trails pages. It is a named outdoor corridor for walkers who want a Dartmouth-side green route.
Waterfront park that hosts Dartmouth Sunshine Series programming. Pair it with Sullivan's Pond Park for the summer entertainment loop across the harbour.
Redevelopment district with construction already underway in municipal planning materials. It sits with Centre Plan language about growth near transit and services.
When Halifax 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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