Where to live in Ottawa
Ottawa is a million people across 2,788 square kilometres, with a federal greenbelt two to ten kilometres wide cut through the middle of it. That ring is the single most important fact about living here: inside it the city was finished before 1960 and you can walk to things, outside it everything was built after 1970 around a car. These are 16 neighbourhood guides, filterable by district below.
Browse dedicated guides for Central Ottawa, The west end, The east end, The south end.
16 communities across the city
Sixteen of the 111 neighbourhoods the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study draws — the ones people actually name when they say where they live. Filter by district, then page through the rest.
Alta Vista
Big postwar lots, mature trees and the hospital campus — the inner-suburban neighbourhood Ottawa doctors and public servants bought into and never left.
Barrhaven
Seventy thousand people on former farmland beyond the Greenbelt, the fastest-growing part of Ottawa, and the one whose commute has no rail answer yet.
Beacon Hill
Postwar and 1960s subdivisions on the escarpment above the Ottawa River, next door to the National Research Council and the Aviation Museum.
Centretown
The residential half of downtown — Bank Street, the Golden Triangle and the walk-up apartments behind them. The densest neighbourhood in the city and the only one where most households do not own a car.
Hintonburg and Wellington West
Wellington West and Preston Street: the strip that turned from working-class west end into Ottawa's restaurant district inside twenty years, with the housing stock still catching up.
Hunt Club and South Keys
The belt between the Greenbelt and the airport: 1980s subdivisions, the city's most linguistically diverse blocks, and two O-Train lines through the middle.
Kanata
A planned town of 76,000 absorbed by Ottawa in 2001, with the country's densest technology cluster inside it and a commute that lives or dies on the Queensway.
Lowertown and the ByWard Market
The blocks Colonel By laid out in 1826, still the busiest street-level district in Ottawa — and the one whose evenings and mornings look least alike.
New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park
Rideau Hall, the Prime Minister's official residence and the ambassadors' streets — the wealthiest square kilometre in the city, and one of the quietest.
Old Ottawa South
Bank Street south of the canal: Brewer Park, Windsor Park and the stretch of the Rideau River that freezes into a second skateway.
Orléans
A hundred thousand people in the far east end, the largest francophone suburb outside Quebec, and an LRT extension that has been finished and unopened for months.
Sandy Hill
The University of Ottawa's neighbourhood, and before that the ambassadors' one: embassies, Victorian brick and the highest student share of any address in the city.
Showing 1–12 of 16 communities
The four districts at a glance
Ottawa is one municipality with two housing markets in it, and the Greenbelt is the line between them. Central Ottawa sells you a pre-war house or a walk-up apartment and a fifteen-minute walk to work; the west, east and south ends sell you twice the floor space and a commute that depends entirely on one highway and, eventually, one rail line.
| District | Neighbourhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Central Ottawa | Centretown, Lowertown and the ByWard Market, Sandy Hill, The Glebe | The pre-war city inside the canal and the Queensway: Centretown, the ByWard Market, Sandy Hill and the Glebe. Walkable, expensive per square foot, and almost entirely built before 1960. |
| The west end | Hintonburg and Wellington West, Kanata, Stittsville, Westboro | From Hintonburg out past the Greenbelt to Kanata and Stittsville — the restaurant strips at one end, the country's densest technology cluster at the other, and the Queensway holding the two together. |
| The east end | Beacon Hill, New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park, Orléans, Vanier | Across the Rideau: Vanier's francophone blocks, the official residences in Rockcliffe Park, the escarpment at Beacon Hill, and a hundred thousand people in Orléans. |
| The south end | Alta Vista, Barrhaven, Hunt Club and South Keys, Old Ottawa South | From Old Ottawa South to Barrhaven, the belt the Greenbelt splits in two — inner-suburban lots and mature trees on one side, the fastest-growing subdivisions in the city on the other. |
The neighbourhoods are published; the four districts are ours. The City of Ottawa hosts the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study boundary set on its open-data portal — 111 neighbourhoods, each with a population estimate — and nothing between that and the 24 electoral wards, which are drawn for elections and cut across the names people search for. So the grouping into four districts is an editorial one. So is the selection: sixteen guides out of 111 neighbourhoods leaves real places out, Nepean, Bells Corners, Manotick, Riverside South and Blackburn Hamlet among them. Where a guide covers more than one ONS neighbourhood — Kanata is six of them, Orléans eight — it says which, and its population and map point are computed across the whole group.