Istanbul in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into the metropolitan area of Istanbul. Istanbul is located in north-western Turkey within the Marmara Region on a total area of . The Bosphorus, which connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, divides the city into a European, Thracian side—comprising the historic and economic centers—and an
Istanbul Islam") was sometimes colloquially used to refer to the city, and was even engraved on some Ottoman coins, but the belief that it was the precursor to the present name, "İstanbul", is belied by the fact that the latter existed well before the former and even predates the Ottoman conquest of the city. The name "İstanbul" (, colloquially ) is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase (pronounced ), which means "to the city" and is how Constantinople was referred to by the local Greeks. This reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The