Alberta
OpenStats City Score, ranking history, and local readings for Medicine Hat.
City Score #88 (2022) → #49 (2025)
Medicine Hat sits at City Score rank #49 with a standing of 56%, 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 39 places versus 2022 (#88 → #49).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #61 of 172 (2025); residential mill rate rank #123 of 172 (9.15 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 Medicine Hat.
Documented pro, junior, university, and high-school teams tied to Medicine Hat.
Published residential mill-rate context for Medicine Hat.
Main municipal recreation hub, including Kinsmen Aquatic Park, for the months when prairie wind makes river floats less appealing.
Municipal cultural flagship linked from the city homepage, where gallery and performance nights give the Gas City a downtown arts address.
Residents answer to Hatters in Medicine Hat News community copy, and the Gas City nickname still turns up in ordinary local reporting.
Where Medicine Hat sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Medicine Hat sits in the South Saskatchewan River valley, where coulees and rolling prairie meet in a way Hatters take for granted until a visitor comments on the light. Locals still call it the Gas City, a nickname that sticks because city-owned utilities are part of everyday talk, from myMH accounts to power notices that name districts like Ross Glen. Southeast Alberta aviation traffic runs through Medicine Hat Regional Airport, and the same regional frame shows up whenever the city talks about itself as more than a stop between bigger centres.
Summer here means floating the South Saskatchewan when the water is behaving, then walking the Heritage Trail Network through coulee edges toward Kin Coulee or Echo Dale Regional Park. Strathcona Island Park hugs the riverside, and the Big Marble Go Centre keeps indoor recreation humming when the wind off the prairie gets sharp. Culture leans on the Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre; downtown Central Park hosts interpretive pop-ups; and Grain to Glory turns the historic Ogilvie Flour Mill grounds into a community festival site.
Sport is not optional identity in this town. The Medicine Hat Tigers fill the local sports conversation, and Athletic Park carries baseball nights for Hatters who prefer grass and lights over the rink. With a municipal claim of 330+ days of sunshine, outdoor plans tend to stick on the calendar longer than they do farther north. The Gas City's pull is practical: river days, trail miles, and a desk that still says Hatters without irony.
Drawn from City of Medicine Hat, City of Medicine Hat, City of Medicine Hat, Medicine Hat News.
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
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 Medicine Hat 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.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Residents answer to Hatters in Medicine Hat News community copy, and the Gas City nickname still turns up in ordinary local reporting.
Municipal parks pages lean on a 330+ days of sunshine claim when they sell outdoor seasons on the coulees and prairie edges.
Grain to Glory stages community festival energy on the historic Ogilvie Flour Mill grounds rather than a generic downtown plaza.
City-owned utilities are everyday local framing here, right down to outage notices that name districts such as Ross Glen and accounts managed through myMH.
Major outdoor park and boating-lake site on the city's recreation maps, a default weekend destination when Hatters want water without leaving town.
Municipal cultural flagship linked from the city homepage, where gallery and performance nights give the Gas City a downtown arts address.
Main municipal recreation hub, including Kinsmen Aquatic Park, for the months when prairie wind makes river floats less appealing.
Named coulee park on Parks and Recreation walk-and-play lists, one of the clearest ways to feel the valley landscape underfoot.
When Medicine Hat 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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