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 28 neighbourhood guides, filterable by district below.
Where to start looking in Ottawa
Most people arrive with one constraint rather than a map. Each line below names one, one place to begin, and the figure behind it, which comes from the guide the line points at.
- The cheapest rent. Vanier, a kilometre from Parliament Hill, where the average two-bedroom purpose-built rent was $1,518 in October 2025. The same figure in the Kanata and Stittsville zone was $2,527. For a studio it is Hunt Club and South Keys at $1,007, the lowest of any Ottawa zone.
- To commute without a car. Centretown has two Line 1 stations at its northern edge and the highest population density in the city, 12,232 people per square kilometre. Stittsville is 20 kilometres out with no rapid transit at either end of the trip.
- A detached house close in. Westboro, where 71% of houses are detached.
- The oldest streets. Lowertown was laid out by Colonel By in 1826 and is the oldest neighbourhood in Ottawa. For pre-1914 houses you can still buy, the Glebe.
Browse dedicated guides for Central Ottawa, The west end, The east end, The south end.
28 communities across the city
28 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.
Bayshore
The west end's densest rental district, wrapped around a shopping centre and a transitway station, and the western terminus of the light rail line until it goes further.
Beacon Hill
Postwar and 1960s subdivisions on the escarpment above the Ottawa River, next door to the National Research Council and the Aviation Museum.
Bells Corners
A crossroads settlement from 1834 that became a Nepean suburb and kept its own main street, sitting inside the Greenbelt with Kanata on the far side of it.
Blackburn Hamlet
A 1960s planned village dropped into the Greenbelt east of the city, with a green belt on all four sides and one road in.
Carlington
Ten thousand people on the hill between the Experimental Farm and Carling Avenue, half wartime housing and half the city's largest single social housing redevelopment.
Carson Grove
A 1971 Campeau subdivision off the Aviation Parkway beside the former air base, the closest thing the east end has to a walk-to-work suburb for the research campuses on either side of it.
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.
Civic Hospital
The blocks around the hospital that is being replaced, where a 1920s streetcar suburb meets a 1990s infill estate and both are about to get a new neighbour on the Experimental Farm.
Heron Gate
Fourteen thousand people in Ottawa's densest concentration of 1960s rental towers, most of one block of which was demolished in 2018 and is still being fought over.
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.
Photographs: Billings Estate by MB-one, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Barrhaven welcome sign by ScottBuckingham, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Bayshore Shopping Centre on Remembrance Day by Ross Dunn - Thanks for 13 million + views, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · NRC M12 Ottawa by Dlanglois, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · A building in Bells Corners by Gardias, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Mer Bleue Bog by Dwong33, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons · Sledding at Carlington Park, Ottawa by Ross Dunn, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Carson Grove Park, Ottawa by Earl Andrew, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Dundonald Park, Centretown, Ottawa, Canada by Ross Dunn, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Late summer at the Farm by Ross Dunn, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · The downtown skyline by Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Autumn at the Parkdale Market in Ottawa by Ross Dunn, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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Showing 1–12 of 28 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 | Carlington, Centretown, Civic Hospital, Lowertown and the ByWard Market, Old Ottawa East, 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 | Bayshore, Bells Corners, Hintonburg and Wellington West, Kanata, Queensway Terrace, 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, Blackburn Hamlet, Carson Grove, New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park, Orléans, Overbrook, 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, Heron Gate, Hunt Club and South Keys, Manotick, Old Ottawa South, Riverside 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: 28 guides out of 111 neighbourhoods leaves real places out, Nepean proper, the east end of Orléans, Cumberland and the north of Kanata 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.