In the past year, the Phoenix area has been compared to other cities around the country in many different studies and rankings.
From best places to live to traffic and economic outlook, here are some of the best ways Phoenix beats out the rest of the country:
10.) Employment Outlook
This is statewide, but Moody's Analytics projects that Arizona will have faster job growth over the next five years than any other state in the nation.
9.) Living for Young People
Although some people view Phoenix as a place for old folks, Vocativ, a news website that relies on data mining, used quirky data to include Phoenix in its list of the top 10 places to live for people under age 35.
8.) Gun Rights
Arizona was named the best state for gun owners this year by Guns & Ammo magazine.
7.) Best Neighborhood
Money magazine claims Phoenix's Windsor Square is one of the "best big-city neighborhoods" in the United States.
6.) Driver Safety
Although it's hard to spend a day on the highways around Phoenix without seeing an accident, a study done by Allstate says Phoenix has the safest drivers among all the big cities in the United States -- the ninth year in a row Phoenix has achieved the ranking.
5.) Best Places to Live
By one measure, Tempe and Scottsdale are among the top 100 places to live in the United States. According to Livability.com, Tempe is 43rd, and Scottsdale's 89th.
4.) Best Place for Right-Wingers to Live
Estately, a real estate company, put together a formula to find the best cities in America for conservatives to live and ranked the town of Gilbert ninth.
3.) Mistresses
Wait . . . this is a bad thing. However, AshleyMadison.com, which helps hook up people looking to have affairs, crowned Phoenix the top mistress city in America this year, dethroning Los Angeles.
2.) LGBT Equality
The City of Phoenix earned a perfect score in the Human Rights Campaign's measure of how inclusive city governments are of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Phoenix is one of just 25 cities nationwide that earned a perfect score, of a few hundred surveyed, and one of just eight cities to earn a perfect score in states with laws that restrict cities from being more inclusive of LGBT people.
1.) Traffic
This might be hard to believe if you sit in traffic every day, but there's no big city in America with better traffic than Phoenix. TomTom, the company that makes the GPS products, used its data to compare travel times of cities across the world, and found that Phoenix's heaviest hours for traffic are better than any other big city in the country.
