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Thousands of people strolled, wheeled, or danced their way up and down a mile of Central Street on Sunday, October 25th. Bike Walk Knoxville's Open Streets event drew crowds to activities like the Mini Ninja obstacle course on Emory Place, the bubble garden at the Central Collective, and Greg Carney's zombie-filled performance of Thriller.
The farm-to-table movement is gaining momentum in Knoxville. More and more area families want fruits, vegetables, and meats from small, local producers instead of commercial growers shipping cross-country. And area chefs value local farm products, both for freshness and to showcase regional cuisine in their restaurants.
If you missed the last MPC meeting, a new video archive makes streaming of it, and footage from hundreds of hours from past meetings, a click away. MPC’s new video archive provides phone, tablet or PC access to the last 70 MPC meetings, covering sessions from January 2010 to the present.
For Gerald Green, MPC’s new Executive Director, the move to Knoxville is a homecoming of sorts. Gerald joined MPC in July, coming to us from western North Carolina, where he spent the better part of 30 years in professional planning. This is his second time around as a Knoxville resident—he spent a couple of years here in graduate school, earning a Master’s degree in Planning from The University of Tennessee, and he stayed for another three years to work with the East Tennessee Development District.
Meet MPC's newest Renaissance man – designer, web guru, preservationist, world traveler, and new dad! Josh Anderson joined MPC staff a couple of weeks ago as webmaster and graphic designer. He came to us from Ruby Tuesday HQ, where he did similar work for a few years. Prior to Ruby Tuesday, Josh lent his talents to an upstart marketing firm in Bearden.
Trainers from a national neighborhood-planning group were in Knoxville last week to conduct a two-day workshop about transit-oriented development (TOD) Smart Growth America brought technical expertise on building mixed-used, transit-centered communities to MPC staff, City of Knoxville officials, and planning professionals from across the region. Read more about the workshop and some of the exciting ideas for future neighborhood redevelopment in Knoxville.
Thanks to the efforts of local bicycling enthusiasts and trained experts, navigating Knoxville’s roads by bike is getting a little easier and safer every day. This spring, the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization and I Bike KNX program hosted an event to teach the teachers of safe city bicycling. A Certified Instructor seminar was given by the League of American Bicyclists in April, with nine area residents completing the intensive training and earning certification. They now are able to teach riders and drivers alike about bicycling on area roads.
Efforts to preserve Knoxville’s cultural heritage just got a boost from the State’s historians. MPC was awarded a grant from the Tennessee Historical Commission to compile an inventory of local historic properties, a project that will survey and evaluate our history of growth and the architecture that resulted from it.
In the not-too-distant future, Knoxville’s downtown waterfront could have a new bridge linking Southside neighborhoods to the University of Tennessee campus and downtown.
The head of the U.S. Department of Transportation visited Knoxville on Tuesday, May 12, to highlight the need for transportation funding that is sufficient to maintain our infrastructure and allow for good planning.
During a joint Metropolitan Planning Commission and Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) staff meeting on Wednesday, April 15th, Mike Conger was presented the Employer Support for the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) Patriot award, submitted by Captain Tarren Barrett.
Mark your calendars for the fourth annual Tennessee Bike Summit, which will be held at the Knoxville Convention Center on April 23 and 24.
Some public spaces in South Knoxville's Old Sevier community have captured the attention of a national planning organization and may soon see transformation.
Mary Kathryn, her husband Michael, and two young children moved to Knoxville from Charlotte, North Carolina, recently. Michael works in downtown Knoxville, so they chose to also live downtown - they are loving the urban life and walkable commute. With the Tennessee River and Ijams Nature Center nearby, the family can experience the outdoor life that makes East Tennessee a wonderful place to call home. And the region?s central location allows them to easily visit family who live out of state.
From the Boyd Harvey House nestled deep in the southwest corner of the county to the Arnweyn House that stands a stone's throw from the Holston River, Knox County is home to many antebellum structures, sites, and districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
When a local employer known for supporting green commutes teams up with a program that encourages alternative transportation, you can bet good things are on the horizon for the company, its workers, and the entire community.
The Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) announced last month that the City of Alcoa and the City of Knoxville have each been awarded a free technical assistance workshop from Smart Growth America. The awards were based on each city's efforts to improve specific aspects of transportation for their citizens. .
The Great Smoky Mountains Regional Greenway Council has long had a vision of connecting Knoxville to the Smoky Mountains by way of greenway trails. TPO staff is proud to have helped them get a little closer to realizing that goal with a plan for linking the existing trail network in Maryville and Alcoa with the greenway trail in Townsend .