Living in Memphis

Moving to Memphis from out of state generally means lower housing costs than most metro areas of comparable size, a car-dependent daily routine, a city split between Memphis proper and unincorporated Shelby County, and a utility and water system run by a single public provider. The adjustment is mostly logistical, not cultural — the harder … Read more

Living in Memphis without a car, long term, is workable in a handful of central neighbourhoods and genuinely difficult almost everywhere else. The city was built around the automobile from the mid-20th century onward, its bus network is limited outside a few corridors, and most jobs, groceries and clinics sit at distances that assume a … Read more

The Memphis rental market is large, geographically varied, and cheaper on average than most U.S. metros — but it is also a market where a high share of households rent rather than own, where single-family homes are rented at unusual scale, and where there is no rent control to shape what a landlord can charge. … Read more

When people say Memphis is changing, they usually mean three overlapping things at once: a physically rebuilt riverfront and downtown core, a population that is moving within the metro area rather than simply growing or shrinking, and a set of institutions — schools, city government, policing — still working through changes set in motion more … Read more

Memphis is governed by a mayor and a 13-member city council, and it sits inside Shelby County, which has its own separately elected mayor and a 13-member county commission. The two governments run in parallel, each with its own budget, taxing authority and set of services, and neither is subordinate to the other. This is … Read more

Memphis’s healthcare picture is built around a cluster of large hospital systems concentrated in a downtown medical district, a nationally known pediatric research hospital in St. Jude, a public safety-net hospital that serves as the region’s Level I trauma center, and health outcome measures that, by the account of independent tracking programs, have long lagged … Read more

Trash and recycling collection inside Memphis city limits is run by the City of Memphis’s Solid Waste Management Division, using wheeled carts collected on a fixed weekly schedule. Recycling is single-stream and collected every other week in a separate blue cart. Glass is not taken curbside. Fees appear on the resident’s MLGW utility bill, and … Read more

Memphis’s tap water comes from underground, not from the Mississippi River running past it. The city sits above the Memphis Sand aquifer, a layer of porous, water-bearing sand several hundred feet down, protected by a thick clay cap that keeps surface contamination out. Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW), the city’s public utility, pumps it … Read more

Most houses in Memphis get electricity, natural gas, water and sewer service from a single provider: Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, known locally as MLGW. It is a division of city government, not a private company, and it bills for all three services on one account. What is MLGW? MLGW is a public utility … Read more

FedEx is headquartered in Memphis and operates its global air-cargo hub — the “Memphis World Hub” — at Memphis International Airport. It is one of the region’s largest employers, its overnight sorting operation is a major reason the airport ranks among the busiest cargo airports on earth, and its name is attached to civic landmarks … Read more