Lima metropolitan area in South America and the seventh in the Americas. Lima metropolitan area The Lima metropolitan area (, also known as "Lima Metropolitana"), is an area formed by the conurbation of the Peruvian city-provinces of Lima (the nation's capital) and Callao. It is the largest of the metropolitan areas of Peru, the seventh largest in the Americas, the fourth largest in Latin America, and among the thirty largest in the world. The conurbation process started to be evident in the 1980s. The metropolitan area is composed of six subregions. These are Lima Norte, Lima Sur, Lima Este, Residential Lima, Central Lima,
Lima Province territories of present-day Lima, Callao and Ica regions, and the provinces of Casma, Huarmey and Santa, which later would be part of the La Costa Department. The department was further subdivided as time passed but the Lima Province kept being part of it. Due to the massive migration from other areas of the country, the need to separate the province from the rest of the department was forecast by experts. In 2002, the new regionalization law passed by President Alejandro Toledo made the Lima Province a separate entity from the rest of the newly created Lima Region. The province is