section_path: Abstract
section_name: Abstract
paragraph_text: Greater Los Angeles or Southland, is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the east, with the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County at its center, and Orange County to the southeast. The Los Angeles–Long Beach combined statistical area (CSA) covers 33,954 square miles (87,940 km 2), making it the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area. The contiguous urban area is 2,281 square miles (5,910 km 2), whereas the remainder mostly consists of mountain and desert areas. With an estimated population of almost 18.6 million (California Department of Finance, 2025), it is the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, behind New York, as well as one of the largest megacities in the world.
  
  In addition to being the nexus of the global entertainment industry, including films, television, and recorded music, Greater Los Angeles is also an important center of international trade, education, media, business, tourism, technology, and sports. It is the third-largest metropolitan area by nominal GDP in the world with an economy exceeding $1 trillion in output, behind New York City and Tokyo.
  
  There are three contiguous component urban areas in Greater Los Angeles: the Inland Empire, which can be broadly defined as Riverside and San Bernardino counties; the Ventura/Oxnard metropolitan area (Ventura County); and the Los Angeles metropolitan area (also known as Metropolitan Los Angeles or Metro LA) consisting of Los Angeles and Orange counties only. The Census Bureau designates the latter as the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metropolitan statistical area (MSA), the fourth largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere and the second-largest metropolitan area in the United States, by population of 13 million as of the 2020 U.S. census. It has a total area of 4,850 square miles (12,561 km 2). Although San Diego–Tijuana borders the Greater Los Angeles area at San Clemente and Temecula, it is not part of it as the two urban areas are not geographically contiguous due to the presence of Camp Pendleton. However, both form part of the Southern California megalopolis which extends into Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.