Wow, I'm new to the board. It seems a lot of these Knoxville comments are based on the way things were 20, 10, even 5 years ago. The downtown area has made a dramatic turnaround. The boarded up buildings on Gay are nowhere close to as prominent as they used to be and are mostly in the 300 block. Market Square is now a vibrant destination with all kinds of restaurants, shops and nightclubs. The Old City is still a short walk away. Over time there's going to be the development on the south bank of the river. In addition to a clear vision, Chattanooga's downtown benefited from having a nice flood plain to build on. Knoxville's narrow river bank was long ago appropriated by UT and KUB.
The drive along Kingston Pike through Sequoyah Hills, onto Lyon's View by Cherokee Country Club, the neighborhoods along Westland and Northshore, and finally along Fort Loudon Lake is a beautiful drive in my opinion.
Many of you critics seem to be focusing on the way it used to be, or your distate of suburban sprawl. There's a lot of ugly in most downtowns. I agree that Knoxville has lagged behind many of its peer (including Chattanooga), but that's changing now. Unfortunately we're always going to suffer from the idiotic mismanagement and infighting that typified our local government for years. Fighting between the city and county governments stifled growth for years. Our former mayor, Victor Ashe, with subsequent "assistance" from our county government, resulted in the Knoxville Smokies moving 25 miles up the road.
Despite all that, the past few years under Haslam saw tremendous changes downtown.
It's not the best, but it's by far not the worst. And it's getting better everyday.