It's a piece of legislation that came from this county. Some 60 percent of Americans still live in towns with fewer than 50,000 people. But urban sprawl and shrinking farms are threatening the serenity in many of these communities. Towns that have grown 10 times larger are hoping they do not have to deal with a tenfold increase in crime, said Terri Kelly, the council's director of special projects. In small towns, change is the biggest concern.
Drug use up Small towns remain much safer on the whole than urban areas.
Rates of existing crime fell sharply from 1998 crime levels in towns with fewer than 100,000 people, according to 1999 FBI crime statistics released Sunday. Incidents of violent crime fell 10 percent in rural areas with fewer than 10,000 people, compared to a 7 percent drop nationwide. And the number of homicides in towns with 10,000 to 24,999 people fell 14 percent, compared to an 8 percent drop nationwide. But crime still lurks in most small towns. Children living in towns with a population under 50,000 are more likely than children living in medium to big cities to use drugs, according to a survey released in January by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York City.