Living in Memphis

The University of Memphis is the city’s largest public university, a research institution with roughly 20,000 students, a law school housed in a former downtown customs building, and a role as one of the region’s largest employers. It anchors a Midtown-adjacent district, feeds the local teacher and health-care workforce, and fields the Memphis Tigers, whose … Read more

In December 2010, the Memphis City Schools board voted to surrender its charter, a move confirmed by city voters in a March 2011 referendum. Under Tennessee law that surrender forced a legal merger with Shelby County Schools, the separate district that served the suburbs. The unified system lasted one school year before six suburban towns … Read more

Memphis and unincorporated Shelby County are served by one large public district, Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS), while six suburban municipalities inside the county run their own separate school districts. Charter schools and a state-run Achievement School District add further layers. Which one a family deals with depends entirely on address. What is Memphis-Shelby County Schools? … Read more

Memphis is, by every major cost-of-living measure that tracks it, cheaper to live in than the U.S. average — mainly because of housing. Groceries, utilities and services run close to or slightly under the national composite, while Tennessee’s tax structure shifts the burden from income onto sales. The gap is real but not uniform across … Read more

Memphis’s job market is built around moving things and treating people: logistics, freight and distribution on one side, healthcare and biomedical research on the other, with a small cluster of Fortune 500 headquarters sitting on top of both. It is not a finance or tech economy, and wages generally sit below the national median — … Read more

Housing in Memphis is cheaper mainly because the region has almost no geographic limit on where homes can be built, population growth has been slow for decades so demand never outpaced supply, and area wages sit below the national average — which keeps the whole local price structure lower, not just housing. How much cheaper … Read more

Memphis’s neighbourhoods differ mainly by density, age of housing and distance from the river: Downtown and Midtown are walkable and built on a grid of pre-1950s housing stock, while East Memphis and the suburbs are car-dependent and built on postwar subdivisions. Which one suits a given resident depends less on “safety” than on commute, housing … Read more

The Memphis Grizzlies are the city’s NBA franchise, playing home games downtown at FedExForum since 2004. The team relocated from Vancouver in 2001, and over two decades it has become one of the more visible civic reference points in Memphis — a shared subject in local sports pages, in downtown business planning, and in how … Read more

Memphis is policed by the Memphis Police Department (MPD) inside city limits, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office in unincorporated county areas and the county jail, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol on state routes. Crime figures come from MPD’s own releases, FBI reporting programs, and local newsrooms — not one single official scoreboard. Who actually polices … Read more

A Memphis summer is hot, humid, and long — running roughly from late May through September, with July and August the peak. The National Weather Service’s Memphis/Mid-South office records average July highs in the mid-90s Fahrenheit, and the humidity off the Mississippi River makes the heat index feel higher than the thermometer reading most afternoons. … Read more