
5) Holly Springs
Holly Springs is a mid-sized city with a population of thirty thousand, but its small size doesn’t keep it from ranking high in the list. The city’s annual crime rate of 0.66 per one thousand people means that it’s safer than three-fourths of the cities in the U.S. Ninety-seven percent of its residents are high school graduates, and more than half possess a college education. These factors alone are enough to make it one of the best places to live in North Carolina, but Holly Springs has got more to offer, especially in the form of its lush green parks and entertainment areas for kids. For adults, it’s even more promising with its unemployment rate of just 2.2 percent. While minorities make up more than 12 percent of the city’s population, interracial tensions are hardly ever witnessed here. In short, it’s a community that has everything from cultural richness to high education and low unemployment.