I've been in Knoxville for 12 years. Dping home health for a living, I'm pretty familiar with a lot of it. I know people that liked the old city when they were in/just out of college, so they stayed close. Now that they have families they never go there. Once you get away from the old city and downtown, to where most people want to live, the city is fairly ugly. Lots of strip malls, a number of which are empty. Rather than refurbish what is already there, they like to let them sit vacant and build new buildings. The one side of town that is considered nice to live in is the west side, but it's more the west suburbs than the city itself. There is a little revival happening here and there in the city, but a lot of neighborhoods that you can tell were nice in the city at one time are now rundown and places you wouldn't want to live in. Most development keeps pushing west and north where there are subsivisions with closely spaced houses popping up everywhere.
I'm more of a country person. What I miss about CNY is that I could be in the country and still be relatively close to anything I wanted. If I could move southern weather to the north, I'd be back there. That same convenience isn't available here. The infrastructure built a few decades ago doesn't support the population growth the last 10-20 years and the terrain funnels all traffic to only a few routes. There are a few nice parks in the area, so I do like that.
