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COL - very slight edge to Tulsa, though both are affordable
Education - Knoxville
Climate - Knoxville
Economy - Tie
Housing Stock - Tie
Safety - Knoxville, though both are safe
Transportation - Knoxville
Location - Knoxville
Air Service - Not sure
Scenery - Knoxville, hands down
Recreation - Knoxville, hands down
Culture - Too subjective
Dining - Knoxville
Downtown Area - Knoxville
Better Future - Knoxville, but Tulsa will do well too.
Overall - Knoxville by a landslide for me. Knoxville has so much to do for a metro its size and the opposite is true for Tulsa. Knoxville's scenery is much better too. Those to metrics makes this a no-brainer for me.
Recreation Knoxville hands down? Huh? Consider that Tulsa area has at least three big casino high rise hotel resorts. I don't think Knoxville has any. If you don't like gambling, then the casinos have music concerts. In Tulsa, Cain's Ballroom is a famous place to go see live music. For more entertainment does Knoxville have a huge aquarium, like the Tulsa metro has? I don't think so. Or a great new iconic city park like Tulsa does? I don't think so.
The Tulsa metro has more people in it than Knoxville. That is a HUGE advantage. Tulsa metro pop. is 1,015,331. Knoxville metro pop. is 879,773. Growth since 2010 Tulsa metro: 8.40%. Knoxville metro growth since 2010: 7.96%. Seriously, Knoxville having better scenery doesn't count for much when Knoxville can't use it to outgrow Tulsa.
Tulsa has an upscale shopping center as in Utica Square where Saks Fifth Avenue is located. Does Knoxville have that? I don't think so. Knoxville's biggest event center is tiny compared to Tulsa's Bank of Oklahoma Center. It strongly rivals the biggest that Oklahoma City has. So it is Tulsa, by far, over Knoxville.
Recreation Knoxville hands down? Huh? Consider that Tulsa area has at least three big casino high rise hotel resorts. I don't think Knoxville has any. If you don't like gambling, then the casinos have music concerts. In Tulsa, Cain's Ballroom is a famous place to go see live music. For more entertainment does Knoxville have a huge aquarium, like the Tulsa metro has? I don't think so. Or a great new iconic city park like Tulsa does? I don't think so.
The Tulsa metro has more people in it than Knoxville. That is a HUGE advantage. Tulsa metro pop. is 1,015,331. Knoxville metro pop. is 879,773. Growth since 2010 Tulsa metro: 8.40%. Knoxville metro growth since 2010: 7.96%. Seriously, Knoxville having better scenery doesn't count for much when Knoxville can't use it to outgrow Tulsa.
Tulsa has an upscale shopping center as in Utica Square where Saks Fifth Avenue is located. Does Knoxville have that? I don't think so. Knoxville's biggest event center is tiny compared to Tulsa's Bank of Oklahoma Center. It strongly rivals the biggest that Oklahoma City has. So it is Tulsa, by far, over Knoxville.
Doesn't sound like you're very familiar with Knoxville.
There is an aquarium within Knoxville's CSA: Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg, named the 3rd best in America by the Travel Channel.
Tulsa's BOK Center has 19,199 seats. Knoxville's Thompson-Boling Arena has 21,678 seats.
For the record, I voted for Tulsa in this matchup. I'm not much of a fan of Knoxville, and Tulsa beats the snot out of Knoxville when it comes to high end shopping and an impressive skyline. But let's not make things up just to boost your own city.
Surely, Keystone Lake just to the west of Tulsa can also count as a nice lake. Controlled discharges from Keystone Dam help keep flooding limited in Tulsa along the Arkansas River during unusual heavy rain periods.
Tahlequah as a small college town is a liberal island in northeast Oklahoma. Slightly closer to Tulsa is the much bigger college town of Stillwater. For local music culture, it's where Red Dirt music originated with a bar on the strip, the Salty Bronc, that honors the originators of it. It's country rock.
Stillwater is also where Garth Brooks and the All American Rejects got their starts. Willie's Saloon where Garth Brooks first sang is still open to this day. In 2019, OSU celebrated the grand opening of its new McKnight center to the New York Philharmonic playing Beethoven's 3rd. The Philadelphia Orchestra is expected to perform there in 2021. Stillwater now has a facility that is able to attract the world's greatest in orchestra music. Tulsa probably identifies closer to OSU than OU, since OSU is closer.
Bartlesville is very great for having the only Frank Lloyd Wright skyscraper plan that was ever built. It also has an architecturally interesting community center for being round. There it holds a Mozart festival every year. A good town to live in, if Tulsa is too big. And unlike most small towns in Oklahoma, it's not on the decline.
Unfortunately, Muskogee is a less remarkable town and has been stagnant to declining for a long time. It's mainly famous for having a castle for medieval hobbyists and fans to gather. Unfortunately, the Best Buy store there recently had to close. The Stillwater Best Buy is still open.
Thanks for making this post, as this is a lot of good insight about northeast Oklahoma. That is too bad that Muskogee has been declining for many years, but at least good to hear Bartlesville and Tahlequah aren't. I'd also like to check out the town of Stillwater, someday. Any other cities and towns you really like in northeast Oklahoma? I remember once hearing some good things in another C-D thread, about Grove.
Weird I forgot about Keystone Lake, but you're right at least that isn't too far away if you live in Tulsa. Also I remember reading Garth Brooks once played in Stillwater bars, but didn't know the band All American Rejects also played in local bars there before getting big!
Tulsa is one of the few cities I have not seen in person yet but Knoxville was quite an enjoyable surprise when I first saw it.
Knoxville was also a pleasant surprise for me, but check Tulsa out. It was much greener and hillier than I had anticipated. Even if not as scenic as Knoxville, it is much more of a city. Knoxville wins for natural environs and higher ed but for architecture, museums, cultural events, parks, restaurants and general urbanity, Tulsa wins and in some categories like architecture by quite a long way. . .
Tulsa's BOK Center has 19,199 seats. Knoxville's Thompson-Boling Arena has 21,678 seats.
For the record, I voted for Tulsa in this matchup. I'm not much of a fan of Knoxville, and Tulsa beats the snot out of Knoxville when it comes to high end shopping and an impressive skyline. But let's not make things up just to boost your own city.
I think it's a bit confusing to include Thompson Boling Arena in this deal because it is part of the University of Tennessee. Knoxville itself only has the Civic Center. which has a capacity of 2.5 to 6 thousand.
Contrast that to Tulsa which has not only the BOK. Right next to that is the Cox center which holds 8.9K. A couple miles from that is the Reynolds Center which is an 8K arena and then there is the Mabee Center at ORU which holds 11.3K. Tulsa is arena poor. LOL.
Education: Both generally have bad city public schools, and solid suburban ones, but Tulsa has some pretty fancy private schools that Knoxville lacks and Booker T. Washington -the highest ranked high school in Tulsa rates significantly higher than L&N Stem Academy -the Knoxville equivalent. K-12 edge Tulsa. UT is much bigger and better than TU, so tertiary education goes to Knoxville
.
UT is much bigger than TU, but certainly not much better. TU has a large endowment with a much better $$ to student ratio than UTK.
On c-d people might eye roll or laugh, but ORU is actually a very good school too.
UT is much bigger than TU, but certainly not much better. TU has a large endowment with a much better $$ to student ratio than UTK.
On c-d people might eye roll or laugh, but ORU is actually a very good school too.
I am rolling my eyes and laughing. TU may have more more endowment per undergraduate student and has some pretty impressive archival holdings, but it is as a small regional private school with nothing like the graduate offerings, national grants and research produced at UT, Knoxville, and actually is in fairly precipitous decline due to the inept meddling of the Kaiser foundation. It is a lesser version of Dickinson or Berea or De Pauw, but with a law school. ORU is Baylor with a lobotomy, half a step above Liberty, and along with those schools the worst educational bang for your buck in the country: Harvard prices and elevated community college quality. I much prefer Tulsa over Knoxville, but for higher ed, you have to be on crack to think that any of the Tulsa universities can compare to the big one in Knoxville. OU and UT are more comparable, even OSU. There is a chance that AAU membership -the bottom line for tier one status - is in UT's reach. I cannot see such a path for TU or ORU. We are not even talking apples and oranges, more like watermelons and grapes. Tulsa is a significantly superior city to Knoxville by nearly every metric, but higher ed goes to Knoxville.
Weird I forgot about Keystone Lake, but you're right at least that isn't too far away if you live in Tulsa. Also I remember reading Garth Brooks once played in Stillwater bars, but didn't know the band All American Rejects also played in local bars there before getting big!
If I remember correctly, All American Rejects is actually from Stillwater, not just some band that happened to play there. Oklahoma is home to a number of surprising non-country acts like Hanson (Tulsa) and Hinder (OKC).
As for the comparison, I've spent many a summer in the Broken Arrow suburb of Tulsa growing up and now that I live in the state (OKC metro) I've made numerous trips up to the area purely for pleasure. I think something nobody has mentioned yet is Tulsa was recently named the "Capital of Route 66" and Tulsa absolutely plays into that bit of its history. I've only been through Knoxville once or twice and never long enough to get a feel for the place but I was neither very impressed or disappointed about the place, though the people always seemed friendly enough. Tulsa beats Knoxville though in the skyline department so bad it's not even a contest and I've personally always been much more a fan of the housing found in the Great Plains than anything typically found back east. Plus I think a lot of people would be surprised by "Green Country" and how hilly and scenic it can actually be, even within the Tulsa metro, and photos often don't do it justice. So for me, Tulsa wins this, though it's purely a choice based on personal experience.
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