MESA — Three Arizona cities have made a top 10 list, but it's not something they're likely to brag about.
The Phoenix suburbs of Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert are listed as three of America's most boring cities in a recent issue of Forbes magazine.
Forbes based the rankings on the amount of national news coverage each city got per capita and insists being boring isn't such a bad thing. For instance, Detroit made national headlines throughout 2008 as the auto industry imploded.
Still, Mesa Mayor Kyle Jones has a message for Forbes: "You guys haven't been paying attention."
He pointed out that Mesa hosts spring training games for the Chicago Cubs every spring and that the city has a burgeoning reputation as an aerospace center. Boeing, Cessna and other companies have taken root at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
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Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman likewise took umbrage. He said the city may be "a hotbed of celibacy," but he prefers his city to stay out of the headlines.
"Most of the national press that I read, at least an awful lot of it, they talk about things that we don't want to have happen in Gilbert," Berman said. "Gilbert's goal, at least since I've been mayor, has just been for Gilbert to be a great place and raise a family."
Chandler City Manager Mark Pentz said he was "somewhat amused" at how Forbes came up with the list, especially since Money Magazine named Chandler one of the top places to live in 2008, and several other national publications honored the city for its leadership, parks, walking trails and youth programs.
"Cities that appear in the national media frequently get a lot of negative coverage," he said. "We don't have the crime and scandals other cities have."
The Forbes list was compiled by writer Joshua Zumbrun, who wrote that people living in "boring" cities might be OK with that.
"The people who live there might not be bored, and they could be fun places to live," Zumbrun wrote. "But they're certainly not in the national spotlight."
Like Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert, the other cities on the list, including Bakersfield, Calif. and North Las Vegas, Nev., are suburbs in larger metro areas.
"Being subsumed in a larger metropolitan area can make for a vibrant economic region," he wrote, "but one consequence is that these smaller cities often lose their distinct identities and places in the national conscience."
He said those cities also tend to have been hit hard by the housing bubble.
"What little media attention some of these cities have received is now tied to the flood of foreclosures, as if the real estate boom had been the only reason to move there in the first place," he wrote.
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