Ontario · Civic arena
Vaughan drinking water hardness is 128 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#14 of 343
64% City Score XP
6/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Vaughan 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.
Full Vaughan water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs New Tecumseth · vs HamiltonHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Vaughan 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.
Vaughan sits at City Score rank #14 with a standing of 64%, 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. The chart below shows how that standing moves year to year.
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #278 of 327 at 60 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #55 of 57 (7.34 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Among Canadian cities on the hub, Vaughan carries a City Score standing of 64% (rank #14 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 12 points above the Ontario peer average across 123 ranked cities. Within Ontario, Vaughan ranks #11 of 123 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is property tax (standing 96%, rank #55 of 57, raw score 7.34). The weakest observed pillar is seismic hazard (standing 39%, rank #134 of 343).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 128 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Vaughan. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #14 of 343
6/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #238
No placement
Rank #60
Rank #278
Rank #134
Rank #55
Vaughan 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 Vaughan.
First VMC public park with skating, splashpad, and playground gear that finally gives the downtown towers a square to claim. Locals treat
The large park rising on New Park Place beside the office towers. When finished it is meant to be the VMC’s main urban lawn for events
Cortellucci Square was the first public park to open in the VMC, with a skating loop and splashpad on Maplecrete Road.
Where Vaughan sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Ask someone for downtown Vaughan and they will likely point you to the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, the VMC in city shorthand. Council treats it as the financial and cultural centre still rising around the VMC Subway Station and SmartVMC Bus Terminal. Parks are catching up to the towers. Cortellucci Square was the first public park to open there, with a winter skating loop and splashpad that make Maplecrete Road feel like a neighbourhood square. Millway Avenue Linear Park adds greenspace, a playground, and a basketball court a short walk away. North Urban Park is the bigger piece under construction on New Park Place, meant to stretch across multiple blocks once the phases land.
Infrastructure talk in the VMC still names Jane Street for hydro and sanitary work, Black Creek for renewal design, and Edgeley Pond and Park for stormwater space moving through approvals. Highway 400 shows up when overpass studies surface. Outside the core, Vaughan Celebrates Concerts in the Park fills summer Wednesdays, and the Order of Vaughan keeps civic recognition on the calendar. MacMillan Farm sits in the heritage file as a city master-plan site rather than a brochure stop.
York Region coverage files Vaughan stories under the local Citizen desk, but the hometown frame is municipal: a downtown being assembled in public, park by park. On the OpenStats City Score for 2025, Vaughan sits at rank 35 of 343. Rankings aside, locals recognize the VMC acronym, the subway-and-bus pair, and the sense that Jane Street and Black Creek are part of how the new centre gets finished.
Drawn from City of Vaughan, City of Vaughan VMC update, VMC Parks and Wayfinding Master Plan, Vaughan Citizen / YorkRegion.com.
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 Vaughan 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
The Globe and Mail
2023 data partnership with Environics Analytics ranking 439 Canadian communities on ten livability categories.
Single edition · 2023
Only one published edition places Vaughan 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
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
City project pages treat the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre as Vaughan’s downtown core, usually shortened to the VMC.
Cortellucci Square was the first public park to open in the VMC, with a skating loop and splashpad on Maplecrete Road.
North Urban Park is planned as a multi-block greenspace a short walk from the VMC Subway Station and SmartVMC Bus Terminal.
Vaughan Celebrates Concerts in the Park is the free Wednesday summer series on the city calendar.
First VMC public park with skating, splashpad, and playground gear that finally gives the downtown towers a square to claim. Locals treat it as proof the centre is becoming a neighbourhood.
Slimmer VMC greenspace with a custom basketball court and accessible playground near Interchange Way. It is the everyday play strip between condo blocks.
The large park rising on New Park Place beside the office towers. When finished it is meant to be the VMC’s main urban lawn for events and open play.
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