BONUS PREDICTIONS
Here are some extra predictions for life in Knoxville 2100 A.D. that we couldn't squeeze into the print edition:
Ray Hill
County Commission Administrator
A rise in the popularity of Scottish terriers.
Beyond that, it is virtually impossible to predict what will happen with technology. Government-wise a lot of changes will come, and the big question is "Will the power of the special interests continue to prevail?"
Everybody seems to have Ingrown Eyeball Syndrome. Will people take a broader view? Will they wrest power from the special interests? If not, Ingrown Eyeball Syndrome could lead to a collapse of the system. The United States has never been ruled by an autocrat, but that is where totalitarian governments come from—the rise of special interests.
Ed Harvey
Owner, Eddie's Auto Parts
This economy cannot go on like it is. This balloon's going to bust, and it's going to be a catastrophe. We're sitting on top of the world now, but it's just like anything else—you're going along just fine, but sometimes you bust a tire, and something's gonna happen eventually. The bubble's going to bust one of these days, and it's going to be like when the stock market fell and all the stock brokers jumped out the windows.
Dwight Van de Vate
Knox County Chief Deputy Sheriff
What will the next 100 years bring? In the early hours of the workday, I can find little reason for any particular sense of optimism. The last century brought us political correctness, yet we witnessed the death of civility. We saw technological marvels unfold at an extraordinary pace, yet we are relentlessly gobbling up the natural resources that we must have to survive. We are living longer and healthier lives than ever before, but we have come to accept violent behavior as some sort of perverse social norm. And finally, even though we are now living in the "information age," are we really getting any more credible information? The Internet gives us e-groups, where truth is routinely sacrificed and replaced with baseless histrionics. America has witnessed a steady qualitative decline in both broadcast and print media. Appearance has replaced intellect and ambition has replaced ethics. Corporate control of the editorial side of journalism is almost complete and mergers such as the proposed AOL/Time Warner combination put the control of information in the hands of fewer and fewer people. A tangential side effect of all this is that it is now very difficult to attract and retain good people in public service careers. So what will the next 100 years bring us? I don't know.
Here's what I do know. When I come home from work, I am greeted by the bright smiling faces of my children. They are six years old, four years old, and the newest is almost a month old. I hug them and I feel boundless optimism and a renewed determination to work at finding a remedy to the things that are wrong. It won't be a pointless exercise, it can't be, it just can't. And I try to remember, always, a simple quote from Jackie Onassis: "If you bungle raising your children, nothing else much matters in life."
Samantha Hutton
Hypnotherapist with Touch of Light Therapeutic Center.
In the next century, will there be as many hypnotherapists as chiropractors?
"In the last five years, there's been a keen increase as far as hypnotherapy goes. I just think there's a lot of fear wrapped up in what it is. It's like what you saw with chiropractors 20 or 30 years ago. Chiropractors had a pretty rough time trying to establish themselves in mainstream health care. But people did realize that it worked and did help. I think the same thing will happen with hypnotherapy. It's just a matter of education... Hypnotherapy goes straight to the source of the more subconscious problem that you're dealing with. It helps a person bypass conscious problems and reach subconscious core issues. You've probably heard about people using it for weight loss and quitting smoking. But it can help any kind of trauma that you had as a child that affects how you think about the world and yourself. It helps you locate the core issue. And as you locate the core issue, you can actually redo that particular trauma and release whatever emotion or belief that's tied to that particular trauma and create a new, what they call, neural pathway and turn that issue around and release it. As we become more technically advanced, I think what we're doing is losing ourselves. In the future, I think that the problem is going to be we are actually getting further and further away from who we are. I think more people are going to be looking within themselves to find their own truths. I don't know if there's going to be as many hypnotherapists as chiropractors, but it's a growing field."
Kevin Jerome Everson
Filmmaker, Sundance Alumnus, and Assistant Professor of Art, UT
On Art
The future of art is the availability of storage. When you talk about storage, art becomes a class issue. It will be the haves and have-nots of storage. There's already no room for art in museums. That's the story of life: closet space.
On Film
Films in 100 years—it'll be the same thing—the same shit. Sci fi films, they're westerns. Look, Star Wars was based on Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. I picked up a New York Times the other day. What are they talking about? Titus Andronicus. Well who wrote that? Shakespeare. When was that written...?
Technology is making things easier, but there's a lot of junk. So, in art and film, there will always be the same percentage of good and bad. There's no revolution in technology. The revolution is in people.
Aside
If we don't find another alternative to penicillin, we're all going to die.
EXPANDED PREDICTIONS
Jeff Welch
Director, Metropolitan Planning Organization (transportation arm of the MPC)
Gazing out my window in downtown and thinking about what transportation will be like in 2100, I have observed cars ,trucks, busses, trolleys, bicyclists, pedestrians, air planes, helicopters, boats, and even hot air balloons. So many ways to travel but very few options for the majority of the people in East Tennessee. Will it be any different 100 years from now? Probably not. The majority of the transportation infrastructure with us today will be with us in 2100. The private vehicle, however propelled, will dominate the transportation system 100 years from now. A street and highway system will continue to be the backbone of our transportation system as it has been since the Roman Empire. A street and highway system gives an individual, the community, and the region the greatest flexibility in meeting diverse social, economic and recreational travel needs.
How the private vehicle will be powered remains to be seen. The quality of the air will dictate the power source. At the same time, we will have a smarter, more intelligent transportation system that will get the maximum out of our transportation system. This will be dictated by overriding social and environmental issues minimizing new road construction as well as the tremendous expense it will take to maintain and operate what we have.
Smarter vehicles and a smarter transportation system will mean a virtually incident-free transportation system. Accidents and breakdowns will be virtually nonexistent. The opportunity will be there to program your vehicle to take you to the beach along our major transportation corridors with minimal driver involvement and do it safely and efficiently. These automated highways will serve as a mass-transit service by virtually connecting cars together with the flexibility of departing from the system at an individual choice. An intelligent transportation system will also address the concerns of an aging population continuing to drive.
There will be a core rail system connecting East Tennessee to the nation and intermodal transportation centers such as McGhee Tyson Airport and transit centers served by a regional transportation system of buses. A comprehensive regional greenway/pedestrian network will connect our neighborhoods and communities together. This regional system will be the show case of the east coast by providing access to the scenic byways in the Smoky Mountain National Park.
Finally, by the year 2100 we should see the completion of Pellissippi Parkway and I-40/75 interchange and Middlebrook Pike from Liberty to Proctor Street.
Bob Hill
Chairman, Farragut Planning Commission
Government
Knox County, the City of Knoxville, and The Town of Farragut will become "Metropolitan Knoxville" sometime in the first half of the century. This governmental unit will be partners with metropolitan governments in Blount and Sevier Counties for economic transportation and utilities planning. The economic backbone of this three-county unit will be along the Pellissippi parkway, which will be extended into Metropolitan Sevier County.
The downtown Knoxville area will be almost totally devoted to governmental, institutional, and educational functions and for business directly associate with these functions. The downtown Knoxville will provide a viable residential area for employees of these institutions. Metropolitan Knoxville will be totally urban with the exception of southeast and northeast Knox County. Agriculture as was known in the late 20th century will no longer be a factor in the economic and social life of this county. Park land and open space will be concentrated in those areas with land being publicly owned.
Transportation
Rail transportation will become very important as the 21st century ends. Railroads serving the area will have electrified main lines and will be rebuilt to increase capacity to carry high-speed, high-volume traffic in commodities, merchandise, food products, and intercity passenger travel. Commercial and personnel vehicles using a non-polluting fuel source will provide transportation to and from rail distribution centers. Use of fuel sources producing airborne contaminants will be forbidden. Highway transportation will be primarily used to connect outlying population and business centers that are not on the high-speed transportation with the available high-speed transportation sources.
Utilities
Citizens will finally become aware that nuclear power can be used to provide safe, efficient electric power. Hazards perceived to be associated with this type of power will be balanced against the hazards and consequences of continued use of fossil fuel for power and transportation. This balance will come out in favor of using nuclear power after it becomes clear that continued use of fossil fuels are too costly from both the environmental and economic standpoint. Fossil fuel will continue to be used but in a very controlled way for air transportation. Fusion energy research will move closer to reality with demonstration plants operating to prove the process is safe and reliable. Water resource will become a limiting factor in development of the metropolitan area. While Knoxville is upstream of most large users of water, our use of this resource may be limited due to interstate compacts that are developed to share such resources and ensure that downstream needs are met.
Information
Newspapers as we know them will no longer be available on a daily basis. News will rarely be dispensed by using print on paper. Everyone will receive news in a more or less continuous mode via electronic media. Electronic media will be as easy to access and use as the telephone was in the year 2000. Censorship will be difficult if not impossible. The accuracy of newspaper information that is taken for granted in 2000 will be challenged continuously in 2100. This may lead to some problems with government stability since with the advent of electronic media, everyone will have a forum without the attendant need for a printing press.
Education
Education will make extensive use of electronic media. Guidance of the process will still be in the hands of dedicated teachers. Education will be restructured to allow knowledge to be transferred and learning to occur with out rigid constraints on age group. This will bring major challenges in how to integrate the education process with the social maturity of the student. Knoxville 2100 will be grateful for the resources of our university in the examination and testing of approaches to the challenges of integration.
Lifestyle
Physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle will become the essential human need after food, shelter, and clothing. Medical advances make it easy for us to stay well. Longevity will increase significantly and will add to the population problem. We will all be productive for a much longer span of time and gainful employment will be a challenge for society as a whole. Service jobs will be the principal industry worldwide, and Knoxville will be no exception. Our living space will continue to be based on the family unit. Land for stand-alone residences will be reduced economically as land parcels are available in smaller and smaller units and the price per unit escalates. Market forces will continue to work in forcing land to be sold for the highest attainable price. This will limit ownership to only what can be afforded by the buyer. Citizens will be more dependent on public ownership of parkland for recreation. This need will be reluctantly met by the governments prior to 2100.
David Patterson
Director, UT Graduate School of Planning
I came to Knoxville in 1965 to stay two years as an economics professor at the University. The University only had 12,000+ students and was just getting ready to explode. Those were the days of Cas Walker, a downtown still vibrant, TVA growing, Alcoa not yet cutting back, and Oak Ridge with its fence recently taken down and burning with Cold War fever. However, the area's largest industrial employment wasn't in any of these, but in the needle trades, with a largely female workforce.
In short, Knoxville was a "milltown" with a relatively small middle class, a substantial upper class with most of the rest in low-wage manufacturing. To put it briefly, Knoxville didn't seem to be the sort of place in which my wife and I wanted to raise our family and I looked forward to a stint in Washington and then a return to a teaching job in the midwest as soon as two years here got me out of debt and established as an academic.
Now 35 years later, we are still here and I have devoted a substantial part of my career to being a booster for the area. There have been many changes, most welcome or the painful by-product of those that were welcome. Based on this experience, I am sure that, in 2100, the Knoxville of 2000 will seem as distant and different as those years Jack Neely brings to life. What might it be like?
* Cas Walker's philosophy and myopic vision, which lived in the hearts and attitudes of too many voters for too many years after his name was forgotten will finally disappear into folklore. As a result, the region will support education and will have governments led by leaders who have an eye on the future, beyond the next election or two.
* Knoxville's major economic activities will be manufacturing—perhaps of software as well as hardware (people will always want "stuff" in addition to services, and we now manufacture for Mexico and Asia)—and tourism. These will continue to yield what they do now, a bifurcated income structure with the higher incomes residing in the west and the rest in the north and east. But the enlightened wealthy will be willing to pay for decent public education to serve those who can't afford the plethora of private schools that will dominate K-12 education in the southern U.S.
* Knoxville itself will be an attractive city, with a well developed and attractive waterfront (on both sides of the river), clean streams, and a dense and diverse population. It will be the hub of activity for all except the westerners who have developed the town of Loudon into a suburban hub.
* Downtown Farragut and Kingston Pike will have been restored from the slum-like storefronts and abandoned shopping centers that crept in during the great depression of the 2020s.
* Traffic problems will still abound but will have ceased to grow as residence and work are driven close together. This will be because, sometime about 2030, Knoxville recognized what Atlanta recognized in 1999: that the automobile and its associated sprawl was destroying the locational advantages that had led to growth in the first place. Hence a local wheel tax and the gasoline tax have combined to make the personal car a luxury once again. The change was gradual but was precipitated by the TDOT proposal to ten-lane I-40, six-lane Emory Road and to eight-lane Middlebrook Pike and Hardin Valley. The situation was also caused by Knox County and the adjacent counties raising taxes 50 percent in just three years to widen and improve the country lanes presently serving the residential subdivisions. The fact that asphalt had tripled in price was also a factor.
* Neyland Stadium will be an internationally known venue for women and men's soccer. Football was relegated to club sport status about 2075. Historians think this happened because rising educational levels throughout the South severely reduced the number of African-American young men who saw football as the only way out of poverty and to fame and fortune. Football fell to a par with rugby and that nearly insane sport, invented by the Iroquois, where people run around hitting each other over the head with little baskets.
* Mary Lou Horner will be honored as the first politician to have served nearly forever. She will announce her retirement to pursue other activities at a banquet honoring that milestone.
* Frank Leuthold's suit against the state's growth management law will have been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court but the case is of no consequence except to legal scholars. There is not a square inch of developable land left in Knox or surrounding counties. This is of no consequence to the real estate developers since they have long since all moved to Hilton Head, which is why they got into development in the first place.
* The State of Tennessee has turned all sales tax authority over to the local governments. A progressive income tax, passed several years after the state went through bankruptcy and Federal receivership in 2010, has finally generated a sufficient surplus to take care of all needs. Governor Tommie Hopper III had promised to make such a change during his successful campaign against Frank Cagle III in the Democratic primary.
* Still, relative to the rest of the country, Knoxville is a good place to live. The Smokies and the Big South Fork and clean lakes and streams have saved what quality of life is still possible in this part of the country.
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