When speaking to people who live OTP, I often find that their perception of living intown is markedly different than the reality that I experience every day. Three of the most common misperceptions I hear about are the crime, traffic and schools - they're all worse than the 'burbs, right? Well, I've covered the topic of schools before, so in this article I'll tackle crime, and we'll save traffic for a later article. Often times people who grew up in the metro Atlanta area have their opinions forged over decades past. There is a tendency, as we get older, to have nostalgia for the "good ol' days" of our youth, and think that everything is going downhill now. However, what many may not realize is that, in reality, things have dramatically improved over the last couple of decades.
Let's speak for a moment on a macro scale. Because of the 24-hour news cycle and the tendency to sensationalize bad news, many people think we are living in an era of declining morals and increasing violence and crime. In actuality, that's not the case. Stephen Pinker makes the case in his book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," that we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. You might say, "Interesting book, but I bet the statistics say otherwise." Actually, no, statistics confirm that...