Ontario · Civic arena
Stratford drinking water hardness is 235 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#107 of 343
54% City Score XP
6/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Stratford packs 6 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 Stratford water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Carleton Place · vs Port ColborneHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Stratford 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.
Stratford sits at City Score rank #107 with a standing of 54%, from 6 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 55 places versus 2022 (#162 → #107).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #136 of 327 at 106 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #29 of 57 (14.17 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Against the national corpus, Stratford carries a City Score standing of 54% (rank #107 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 1 points above the Ontario peer average across 123 ranked cities. Within Ontario, Stratford ranks #54 of 123 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is broadband download (ISED seed tier) (standing 83%, rank #58 of 343, raw score 1000). The weakest observed pillar is drinking-water hardness (standing 18%, rank #63 of 343).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 235 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Stratford. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #107 of 343
6/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #63
No placement
Rank #58
Rank #136
Rank #239
Rank #29
Stratford 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
Published residential mill-rate context for Stratford.
The seasonal heart of town, from classic Festival stages to the Tom Patterson Theatre. April-to-November programming still sets the visitor
Civic focus behind City Hall where Ontario Street and Wellington meet. The Avon River parks sit just north, keeping theatre nights
Stratford Festival performances are framed as running April through November, with the Tom Patterson Theatre among the venues.
Where Stratford sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Stratford is a Perth County theatre town that still introduces itself by the Stratford Festival. Destination Stratford's line is blunt: The Arts Are What We Are. Festival stages run from April through November, and the Tom Patterson Theatre joined the older Festival houses as a newer room for the same seasonal rush. Downtown's Ontario Street and Wellington network gathers around City Hall and Market Square, with the Avon River and park system just north of the core.
The other big civic story is industrial ground turning into neighbourhood. The Grand Trunk site, still called the Cooper Site by people who grew up with the locomotive shops, is an 18-acre city-owned parcel beside downtown. Council's Grand Trunk Renewal work pairs housing talk with a shared community facility involving the YMCA of Three Rivers and Stratford Public Library, while University of Waterloo's Stratford Campus already sits on the lands. Lights On Stratford even loaned its LED heart sculpture to the GTR facade to keep the empty shops looking alive after dark.
The calendar is not only Shakespeare. Stratford Summer Music, culinary trails, and Stratford Perth Museum exhibits share space with Beacon Herald coverage of municipal politics and Festival-adjacent culture. Treasure Hunt Weekends and Engage Stratford keep public process in view while Huron Street lane closures remind everyone the core still moves trucks and theatre traffic together. On OpenStats City Score for 2025, Stratford sits at rank 45 of 343. Locals still say Festival first, then Avon River, then whatever is happening at the Cooper Site this month.
Drawn from Destination Stratford - Stratford Festival, Destination Stratford, City of Stratford - Cooper Block, Engage Stratford - Grand Trunk Renewal, The Stratford Beacon Herald.
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 Stratford 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
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
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
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.
Destination Stratford brands the city with the line The Arts Are What We Are.
Stratford Festival performances are framed as running April through November, with the Tom Patterson Theatre among the venues.
The Grand Trunk site is an 18-acre municipal property with a historic locomotive-repair superstructure beside downtown.
Council directed up to $15 million toward a shared community facility with the YMCA of Three Rivers and Stratford Public Library.
The seasonal heart of town, from classic Festival stages to the Tom Patterson Theatre. April-to-November programming still sets the visitor rhythm.
City-owned former locomotive shops next to downtown, now the Grand Trunk Renewal project for housing, public space, and a shared community facility. Locals still say Cooper Site in conversation.
Civic focus behind City Hall where Ontario Street and Wellington meet. The Avon River parks sit just north, keeping theatre nights and river walks on one loop.
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