“Is Tucson in Arizona?” John Lennon asked Paul McCartney as they worked out a hometown for Jojo in “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary. McCartney’s answer: “Yeah, it is, yeah — it’s where they make ‘High Chaparral.’”
More than half a century later, Tucson’s vintage TV-Western identity lingers in the public imagination, and to be fair, this is still the kind of place where you’ll find working ranches, as many pickups as sedans, and citywide school closures during February’s Rodeo Break.
But some things have changed. Since Jojo’s day, the metro area population that has more than tripled, to about 1,080,000. Roughly 547,000 live in the city proper, although locals consider themselves rightful Tucsonans inside or outside the city limits. Today, Tucson is also the kind of place that boasts the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation in the United States, enough optical sciences expertise at the University of Arizona to service sone of the largest telescopes in the world — and so many local observatories, an official astronomy trail launched this year.
Location: Pima County in southern Arizona, about 70 miles north of the Mexican border and 110 miles southeast of Phoenix
Population: 547,239 in the city and 1,080,000 in the metro area
Area: About 240 square miles in the city and 500 square miles in the metro area
Homeownership: 52 percent in the city and 65 percent in the metro area
The vibe: Aerospace hub meets outdoorsy college town with a distinct Mexican flavor.
Having grown out of a 1775 Spanish presidio, Tucson is about an hour’s drive north of Mexico in the Sonoran Desert, where mountains surround a saguaro-studded valley that has sustained people for more than 10,000 years. That precolonial history accounts for the “+” in the 250+ Anniversary party on the city’s 2025 calendar — one that’s already packed with crowd pleasers such as the Tucson Festival of Books and the Tucson International Mariachi Conference. Even the century-old Tucson Rodeo Parade — in which Linda Ronstadt, a hometown heroine, used to ride as a child — draws an estimated 200,000 spectators.
“It’s a big city that feels like a small town,” said Mayor Regina Romero, the first woman and first Latina elected to the office. Despite living in Arizona’s second-largest city, she added, “we still sometimes see ourselves as a little pueblo.”
Indeed, Tucsonans’ nickname for their city is the Old Pueblo. And after decades of sprawl expanded the larger metropolitan area’s footprint to about 500 square miles, the city’s older central neighborhoods — most famously, the adobe-filled Barrio Viejo — are regaining popularity.
One key factor is the Sun Link, a free electric streetcar that connects many of these places: An estimated 100,000 Tucsonans live or work within half a mile of the route. “It is a perfect example of a public investment that leveraged billions of dollars of private investment,” said Mayor Romero. Since the route’s inception almost 11 years ago, new restaurants, businesses and housing projects have thrived along the once-ailing corridor.
The plan is to increase rapid transit throughout the city over the next several years, in part to encourage more mixed-use walkable communities — and in part, said the mayor, “to make sure that if someone wants to live, work and play in our city, they can actually get on the bus or streetcar and go anywhere.”
Where some Tucsonans tend to go, of course, is far away — at least in the summer, when triple-digit temperatures are a fact of life. Like much of the Sunbelt, the city loses a number of snowbird retirees to their other homes in the Northeast or Midwest.
Retired or not, home buyers are choosing Tucson over pricier places. “Interestingly, the market that’s really jumped up a lot in the last few years has been the high mountains,” said Kevin Kaplan, chief operating officer of Long Realty. “Places like Denver have become very, very expensive,” he explained, and Tucson offers comparative affordability — with no shortage of mountains.
And that ring of peaks is more than a physical feature, said the mayor. “It is serenity.”
Getting There, Getting Around
Tucson is largely a car (and pickup truck) town, but there are options.
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Streetcar: The free Sun Link connects Mercado San Agustin and points east to the University of Arizona, along a 30-minute, nearly four-mile route.
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Rail: Amtrak has a downtown station with service to Phoenix, Flagstaff, San Diego, Los Angeles and more.
Neighborhoods
Homes range from single to multifamily, depending on the neighborhood.
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Barrio Viejo A remnant of a larger 19th-century barrio that’s lined with traditional Sonoran adobes. Full of character, beauty, great food, drink and art; but also tourists and short-term vacation rentals.
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Blenman Elm is anchored by the venerable Arizona Inn, and dates to the early 1900s.
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Sam Hughes National Historic District also dates to the early 1900s, and is known for family-friendly amenities, including Himmel Park.
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The Mercado District is a planned community anchored by the retail- and restaurant-focused Mercado San Agustin and surrounded by apartments and single-family homes.
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The Catalina Foothills is on the north side of town, with mostly single-family homes often with expansive city and mountain views.
Schools
There are 335 public schools and 92 private schools serving 155,763 K-12 students (2024-2025) in the Tucson metro area.
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