I’ve lived in 5 states over the past 15 years, lived in cities and lived in suburbs. Currently live in Kingsport, it’s certainly in the top two of my favorite places I’ve lived. Houses are lovely and affordable, it has a reasonable selection of amenities and is accessible to more in Johnson City or Bristol. Is it a social Mecca is its own right? Not really, but neither is Johnson City. Despite what people here will tell you, ETSU isn’t exactly an elite institution drawing high culture and money into town. I’ve lived in multiple major college towns, I’ll tell you that although very nice, Johnson City isn’t exactly Ann Arbor.

As to the Kingsport smell people talk about, the bulk of it was from Domtar, the paper mill. They’ve been shut down due to Covid for months now, they’re in the process of a complete retool which I think is going to be done in 2023 or thereabouts. Hard to say if they’ll have it under better control when they reopen, but they’ll be doing a completely different kind of paper work is my understanding, so the odds seem good. Even then, it wasn’t constant and it wasn’t the worst thing in the world depending on where it were, certainly no worse than any part of Chicago every day. People need to get some perspective.

That said, I’d avoid the area directly around Eastman, they get some minor chemical smells but they don’t travel far. Sewage treatment plant down there is much worse, avoid that at all costs.