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
Names of Istanbul popular speech, the most common way of referring to it came to be simply "the City" (Greek: "hē Polis", , Modern Greek: "i Poli", η Πόλη). This usage, still current today in colloquial Greek and Armenian (Պոլիս, pronounced "Polis" or "Bolis" in the Western Armenian dialect prevalent in the city), also became the source of the later Turkish name, "Istanbul" (see below). "Kostantiniyye" (Arabic, Persian , "Qusṭanṭīniyya", Ottoman Turkish , "Ḳosṭanṭīnīye") is the name by which the city came to be known in the Islamic world. It is an Arabic calqued form of "Constantinople", with an Arabic ending meaning 'place