Peabody Ranked No. 5 in Nation Among Most Peaceful Cities

The vision of humanity in the Tanner City is pretty peaceful, according to the new United States Peace Index just released by the Vision of Humanity, a nongovernmental organization based out of Sydney, Australia, and the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Peabody, in fact, ranks fifth in the nation of most peaceful cities. The ranking is based on the number of homicides, incarcerations, violent crime, police employees and the availability of small arms. The last indicator is not actually represented on the published chart, however.

The study, which is based on 2010 figures, does say it is looking at statistics within 61 metropolitan areas -- the top of the list is Cambridge-Newton-Framingham. The data comes from the 2010 U.S. Census and refers to geographical regions as identified by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Peabody metro area includes Danvers, Salem, Marblehead, Swampscott, Nahant and Lynn, but the Tanner City gets the credit in name.

At the bottom of the list is the Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich. area. with a peace index of 3.87 on a 5-point scale. Violent crime and homicide far outweighs the indicators for incarceration and police employees for Detroit while Cambridge-Newton-Framingham at the opposite end has all relatively low numbers.

Peabody's peace index is 1.54, just ahead of the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metro area.

The NGO publishes two indices: one looking at Global Peace and the other just in the United States. The institute calls itself "a non-profit research organization dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress."

The U.S. Peace Index also ranks the 50 states and finds that Maine is the most peaceful while Louisiana is 50th.

The findings also conclude "that the U.S. is more peaceful now than at any other time over the last twenty years."

Here are the top 10 most peaceful metropolitan areas, according to the study:

1. Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, Mass.
2. Edison-New Brunswick, N.J.
3. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash.
4. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minn.-Wis.
5. Peabody, Mass.
6. Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, R.I.-Mass.
7. Lake County-Kenosha County, Ill.-Wis.
8. Nassau-Suffolk, N.Y.
9. Salt Lake City, Utah
10. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore.-Wash.

For more information, go to the Vision of Humanity website. So what do you think? How peaceful is Peabody?