How we grade neighbourhoods

Every number on this site comes from public data, worked out the same way for every neighbourhood. We grade categories, never whole neighbourhoods. A place can be great for transit and weaker on quiet streets, and that's useful to know.

Neighbourhoods and homes

We use the City of Burnaby's 20 Community Plan Areas exactly as the City draws them, from Metrotown and Brentwood to the Heights and Edmonds. They cover nearly every home; a sliver of shoreline and river at the city's edges isn't in any area and isn't graded.

"Homes" are the City's address points. Units at the same location count once, so a 40-unit tower counts the same as one house when we measure distances.

Zooming in: census areas

Neighbourhoods are big, and one end can be quite different from the other. Zoom in on the map and each neighbourhood breaks into Statistics Canada dissemination areas, the smallest areas the census publishes (usually 400 to 700 residents). Each one is graded with the same home-by-home measures as the neighbourhoods, and tapping one shows its own 2021 Census figures: household income, renters, age, families and housing. Statistics Canada withholds some figures, such as income, for very small areas, so those show as "Not published".

First Nation reserve lands

Reserves near Burnaby (boundaries from Statistics Canada's 2021 census subdivisions, plus OpenStreetMap for reserves with no residents) are governed by their Nations, not the City. The map names them but doesn't grade them or profile who lives there.

Not covered yet

The City doesn't publish a floodplain map as open data, and the Province's mapped floodplains don't cover Burnaby, so Burnaby has no flood-risk grade. Low land along the Fraser River in Big Bend and around the Brunette River and Still Creek is on the floodplain; check with the City before you buy or build there. The City doesn't publish weekly building permit reports either, so there's no "being built" map yet.

Garbage day

The City's map gives the collection zones and its 2026 Curbside Collection Calendar gives each zone's weekday. Statutory holidays can move a pickup, and A and B zones take garbage on alternating weeks, so check the City's calendar for your exact date. The schedule is for houses and duplexes; apartments and condos are usually collected separately.

Category scores (0–100) and grades

Most scores are the share of homes within a set walking distance of something, so 80 means 80% of homes. Distances are straight-line, not walking routes. Grades: A is 80+, B 65–79, C 45–64, D 25–44, E under 25.

The "best for" lists

Each list is a weighted average of category scores; a category with no data for an area is left out of that area's average. Areas with fewer than 100 homes (mostly industrial land) are left out. You can set your own weights on the Best areas page.

Census figures ("Who lives here")

Population, age, owners and renters, household types, home types, income, housing costs and commuting come from Statistics Canada's 2021 Census Profile for dissemination areas (small areas of a few hundred people). Those areas don't follow neighbourhood lines, so we split each one between neighbourhoods by where its homes are, and add up the counts. Medians (age, household income) are averages of the areas' medians, weighted by the people or households they describe, so treat them as close estimates. The "City" comparison figures cover City of Burnaby homes only.

Coming soon: New 2026 Census figures are coming in stages: population counts on February 10, 2027, income and families on July 14, home values and rents on September 8, and commuting on December 1, 2027. We’ll update the map as each one comes out.

One census figure is graded for everyone because it describes what living somewhere is like: commute time. One more, kids at home (the share of households that are families with children at home), counts only in the Families score, because parents tell us kids nearby matter to them; it's left out of the Overall score. Age, income and renting are shown, and you can shade the map by them, but they never count towards a grade. Ranking places by those would steer people by who their neighbours are, which isn't what a neighbourhood guide should do.

Home values and rents

The Home values and Rents maps use the census's median home value (what owners estimated their home would sell for, in May 2021) and median monthly rent including utilities. They aren't graded, because a higher price isn't better or worse. Prices have moved since 2021, so use them to compare areas, not as today's prices. We used to grade "housing costs" as the share of households spending 30% or more of their income on housing, but that mostly tracks income rather than price, so it's now shown as a figure instead of a grade.

Nature and outdoors

This looks at what's around a home, including what's past the city limits: rivers, lakes, ocean shore and beaches, trails, provincial parks and natural areas. Each home gets three distances, and closer scores higher on a sliding scale: a walk (40% of the score, to the nearest of any of them; 500 m scores 70, 1 km scores 50), a bike ride (35%, to a bigger one, like a river, a lake of 20+ hectares, a trail of 10+ km or a natural area of 50+ hectares; 3 km scores 55) and a drive (25%, to a major one, like a lake of 100+ hectares, a river of 20+ km, a trail of 30+ km, a natural area of 200+ hectares or the ocean; 15 km scores 35). A neighbourhood's score is the average over its homes. Water only counts where the public can reach it: within 150 m of a trail or path, or inside or beside a park. Trails need a name and at least 2 km of path; a path named after the road beside it counts as a sidewalk. Fishing, birding and other activities aren't scored, because the data on them is too patchy to be fair. Distances are straight lines, so a home across a river from a trail may be a longer trip than it looks.

Quiet streets and road safety

Quiet streets measures how close homes are to traffic, using OpenStreetMap road types. A home right beside Highway 1 counts as fully exposed, fading to nothing 300 m away; arterial and secondary roads (like Kingsway, Canada Way or Hastings Street) fade out by 150 m, and collector roads by 100 m, at about half the weight. The neighbourhood's score is the average over its homes, scaled so the busiest areas grade E. Road safety counts ICBC-reported crashes per km² per year. For the smaller census areas we also count crashes within 60 m of the area's edge, because those edges are often the busy roads themselves.

Crime

No score includes crime yet. Police data by neighbourhood isn't published. When it arrives it becomes its own category, weighted heavily for Families and Seniors. We won't estimate crime from anything else, like income or renters, because that would mark areas down for who lives there.

School test results

Each school's number is the share of BC schools its provincial test results beat. Elementary and middle schools use the Foundation Skills Assessment (Grade 4 and 7 reading and math, 2023/2024–2025/2026): each year's average score is compared with the BC average for that grade and skill, pooled over three years by number of students, and ranked against every BC school with at least 20 writers. High schools use the graduation assessments (Grade 10 numeracy, Grade 10 and 12 literacy, 2022/2023–2024/2025): the share of students proficient or extending. The Province hides any count under 10, so that share is estimated within a narrow range, and years where the range is too wide are left out. A school's number is the average of its reading, math, literacy and numeracy percentiles.

Graduation rates (the six-year completion rate) are published for school districts only, so we show SD41's rate rather than one for each school. Test results never count toward a neighbourhood's grade: they follow family income closely, the Ministry asks that FSA not be used to rank schools, and they say nothing about a school's programs, teachers or how welcome a child feels. Use them as one clue and visit the school.

Crime

No public crime data exists at the neighbourhood level in Burnaby, so we don't estimate or model it. Until real local data is released, we only point to city-wide figures from official sources.

Sources

• City of Burnaby Open Data: Community Plan Areas, the city boundary, address points, parks and curbside collection zones (City of Burnaby Open Data (downloaded 5 Nov 2026)). Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Burnaby.
• City of Burnaby Curbside Collection Calendar 2026: each collection zone's weekday.
• Province of BC K–12 school list: public, independent and francophone schools with their locations (Open Government Licence – BC).
• ICBC reported crashes, 2021–2025: 43,690 crashes in Burnaby. ICBC data is self-reported, excludes parking lots, and places mid-block crashes between the nearest intersections.
• TransLink GTFS: stops and weekday departures for 2026-11-04.
• Province of BC, Ministry of Education and Child Care: Foundation Skills Assessment, Graduation Assessments and Six-Year Completion Rate extracts (BC Data Catalogue, Open Government Licence – BC).
• Province of BC: licensed childcare locations, plus HealthLink BC pharmacy, walk-in clinic and hospital lists (Open Government Licence – BC).
• Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population: Census Profile and boundaries for dissemination areas (Open Government Licence – Canada).
• Statistics Canada 2021 boundaries: census subdivisions (First Nation reserves).
• OpenStreetMap: grocery stores, cafés, restaurants, playgrounds, road types and Highway 1 exits; rivers, lakes, shoreline, beaches, trails and natural areas (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).
• BC Parks: provincial park, conservancy and ecological reserve boundaries (Province of BC, Open Government Licence – BC).

Data built 2026-11-06.