At this point, with the preservation-fueled revival of downtown bringing people, dollars, and uncustomary positive press to the city, the value of the community’s limited stock of old buildings might seem obvious. But their demolition is still occurring, often without ...

You wouldn’t think an urban-planning organization like the Metropolitan Planning Commission would be subject to global conspiracy theories. Yet, in the past year or so, the 57-year-old MPC has been vilified as a puppet of the United Nations, plotting to ...

What does Knoxville really need? Everybody’s got an opinion, as we’ve discovered each week in our What Knoxville Needs column. While some of the ideas are a bit silly (a menacing face for the Sunsphere?), others are actually quite reasonable—in ...

Here are some of the most interesting figures we wrote about in the past year.

We take a look back at the year that was with some of our favorite stories.

Pastor Jill Sizemore isn’t very tall, but she’s every bit the commanding figure an ex-lieutenant colonel should be.

Rafiq Mahdi is a striking figure. He’s tall and wears a traditional Muslim tunic that is bright white—without a speck of dirt in sight—and a white hat. But really, he’s just an everyday dad who happens to be Muslim.

For the Rev. Dr. John Butler, faith is larger than one person. It encompasses the entire community.

They’ve rarely worked together. They didn’t learn cooking together as kids. And the last time the two lived in the same house, 30-something years ago, neither aspired to be any sort of chef. Yet sisters Holly and Peggy Hambright are ...

The late Frank Kolinsky would always say that God don’t make no trash—his response when anyone had anything bad to say about the assemblage of rogues and junkies and gutter drunks that comprised the residential population of the E.M. Jellinek ...

Back in the early ’90s, when Knoxville’s downtown was a barren landscape, the formation of the Central Business Improvement District made a lot of sense. Downtown needed all the help it could get. But now that it’s revitalized, should the ...

Thanksgiving is intended as a day of reflection, when you take a moment from the rush of daily duties to recall how blessed you really are for the things you have (whether they’re all you want). But it doesn’t always ...

For most people, memories of the 70-year-old Secret City that produced the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 exist in crisp, perfectly composed black and white images. These photos capture the intense, patriotic purpose of skilled workers and the ...

This year’s festival includes more than 70 titles—shorts and features, documentaries and scripted films. There are films with environmental themes, like Roots and Hollers, about the ginseng trade. Other films focus on the concerns of cultural minorities (Hombre y Tierra) ...

Has it been 15 years already? It’s true. WDVX, Knoxville’s most beloved roots-music station on your FM dial, hit the airwaves that many years ago with few prospects but a lot of ambition. Now our lil’ public-radio powerhouse is a ...