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 flood risk, and that's useful to know.

Neighbourhoods and homes

We use the City of Vancouver's 22 local areas exactly as the City draws them. Together they cover the whole city, so every home is graded. UBC and the University Endowment Lands are outside the City of Vancouver, so they aren't on this map.

"Homes" are the City's property addresses. Units at the same location count once, so a 40-unit building 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

Musqueam 2 in the south of the city and Kitsilano 6 (Sen̓áḵw, by the Burrard Bridge), the lands of the Musqueam and Squamish Nations (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. Shops, clinics and bus stops on those lands still count for the homes around them.

Flood risk in Vancouver

The City's designated floodplain combines its coastal floodplain around False Creek and along the Fraser River, which plans for a 1-in-500-year storm with a metre of sea level rise and no flood protection, with the Fraser River's 1-in-500-year storm today, the Still Creek floodplain, and a zone where waves would add to the hazard. So this grade includes future risk as well as today's. Every home inside the floodplain counts the same.

Not covered yet

The City doesn't publish weekly building permit reports in the form we use, so Vancouver has no "being built" map yet, and its garbage zone data is empty, so there's no garbage day. Highway access is measured to the Highway 1 and Highway 99 exits mapped in OpenStreetMap, just outside the city, so the west side and downtown grade low on it even where transit is excellent.

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 Vancouver 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.

Quiet streets and road safety

Quiet streets measures how close homes are to traffic, using OpenStreetMap road types. A home right beside Highway 1 or 99 counts as fully exposed, fading to nothing 300 m away; arterial and secondary roads (like Broadway, Kingsway or Oak 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

Crime comes from the Vancouver Police Department's public GeoDASH data for 2021 to 2025: founded incidents of violent offences, break-ins, thefts and mischief. Collisions are left out because Road safety already counts them. VPD groups every violent offence together for privacy, so we can't separate, say, robbery from assault, and every type counts the same in the rate. Stanley Park and Musqueam are reported separately and aren't graded, so their incidents don't count against the West End or Dunbar.

VPD moves violent-offence locations by several blocks and places property crime only to the hundred block, so we grade whole neighbourhoods and never plot incidents or score single addresses. VPD's figures use a different counting method from Statistics Canada's, so they can't be compared with national crime rates. Other cities' grades don't include crime until we have the same kind of data for them, so Vancouver's Overall, Families and Seniors scores aren't directly comparable with theirs. The VPD cautions people not to rely on its data to judge the safety of a specific location or area, and neither the VPD, the Vancouver Police Board nor the City accepts liability for decisions based on it.

Crime grades come from Vancouver Police Department reports and cover whole neighbourhoods, not single addresses. 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 SD39'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

Crime grades come from Vancouver Police Department reports and cover whole neighbourhoods, not single addresses. See the Vancouver Police Department's GeoDASH crime map.

Sources

• City of Vancouver Open Data Portal: local areas, property addresses, parks and the designated floodplain (City of Vancouver Open Data Portal (downloaded 3 Nov 2026)). Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.
• Vancouver Police Department GeoDASH: 163,945 reported incidents, 2021–2025 (free, non-commercial public use). 796 of them were in Stanley Park, Musqueam or at no published location, and aren't in any grade.
• Province of BC K–12 school list: public, independent and francophone schools with their locations (Open Government Licence – BC).
• ICBC reported crashes, 2021–2025: 124,657 crashes in Vancouver. 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 or 99 exits (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).

Data built 2026-11-04.