Say what you will about Gilbert -- which is probably not very much -- that East Valley town has its charm. There's great barbecue, decent housing prices, and did we already mention the barbecue? Oddly enough, it turns out that being a boring city isn't all that bad. In fact, it's downright saintly.
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A new study by property-listing site Movoto.com revealed the "Five Least Sinful Cities in America," ranking dear old Gilbert at number two. The list was produced in conjunction with a similar study which found the "Five Most Sinful Cities" by analyzing the number of sins committed in 95 of the 100 most populated cities in America.
The sins in this case, were based off of the seven deadly sins: envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath. These were measured by factors such as the number of strip clubs or the rate of obesity.
Interestingly enough, the most sinful city, according to the site's calculations, was actually St. Louis. The most saintly, or least sinful, was New York City. Like the sinful list, the saintly list calculated the sin level (or lack thereof) of each city by measuring virtues such as charity, chastity, diligence, generosity, humility, kindness, and temperance. It equated things like low crimes rates to kindness, and low obesity rates to temperance. This begs the question: who's really eating all that barbecue?
In a breakdown of Gilbert's saintly ranking, the roughly 212,000-person city came in at number two for kindness with a rate of one violent crime per year for every 1,000 residents. It placed 13th in chastity, 17th in humility, 26th for temperance, 27th for diligence, and a not-too-horrible 41st in generosity.
As your mother always says, "You could do worse."'
