The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
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10/10/2011
The Good: Knoxville has the main campus of the University of Tennessee. This is a city that supports college sports, especially football and basketball. Neyland Stadium at UT seats approximately 108,000 people. The stadium is almost always filled to capacity during home games. Knoxville is close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are great shopping centers and malls here, too.
The Bad: Two cross-country interstates (I-40 & I-75) run concurrently through the heart of the city. When you add all the local traffic, you have a nightmare. Even a minor accident on the Interstate can result in a traffic backup that runs for miles. TDOT recently completed the final phase of its Interstate upgrade so that there is no longer a bottle neck of traffic in downtown which used to have fewer lanes. But there is still far too much traffic to battle if you are a daily commuter. Air pollution is another problem. In the past, Knoxville has been on the EPA's "dirty dozen" list for the worst ozone and fine particulate pollution in the country. This is a bad place to live for people with asthma or other respiratory problems. This has been stated in the local media. I'm sure the excessive traffic has something to do with this.
The Ugly: There are many area in downtown and elsewhere that are a real eyesore. The downtown is not attractive and the development was done in a rather haphazard manner, in my opinion. There are many very old neighborhoods that look like ghettos. But the people who live there can't afford to live elsewhere. The city is a contrast between the rich and the poor.Crime is high here compared to the national average. Also, the cancer rates here are significantly higher than the national average, possibly because of all the toxic waste from nearby Oak Ridge (one of the sites of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb).
My recommendation: Forget about Knoxville. I have lived here for 22 years and I know from my travels and my research that there many other places that would be far better than Knoxville. Happy hunting.
Don | Knoxville, TN