>>508640750Knoxville is sounding more and more like your vibe, anon. You'd be right between the Smokies and Frozen Head, close enough to Nash and Chatt, there's a decent downtown area and plenty of food. I don't personally love Knox, and I'm a native, but A LOT of people do. I don't think it's worth the price when I could live in Columbus instead for the same rent, but I didn't want to keep paying rent there so moved out to Morgan county TN.
Knoxville is kind of ghetto looking in the sense that it still has a lot of old warehouses in the downtown area, hence the whole scruffy city thing. It's not culturally ghetto though. If you are actually out spending money you rarely see black people. If you have the money to not live in the hood, you'd be fine, but you haven't said how much to can spend on rent. Rent is going to easily be 1200 minimum for a one room and the majority of Knox isn't walkable at all. Market Square is walkable enough but rent there will easily be 1500 if not more.
If you weren't so anti-burb I'd once again suggest Oak Ridge to you. You can maybe check out Alcoa area or something like that, rent will probably be a little cheaper.