Miami Metropolitan Area

The Miami metropolitan area is a metropolitan area including Miami, Florida and nearby communities. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget designates the area the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area, a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) used for statistical purposes by the United States Census Bureau and other entities. It was also known as the South Florida Metropolitan area (SFMA, Sofla). The OMB defines the MSA as comprising Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties—Florida's three most populous counties—with principal cities including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach, and Boca Raton.

With 5,564,635 inhabitants as of the 2010 Census, the Miami metropolitan area is the most populous in Florida and in the Southeastern United States and the eighth-most populous in the United States. It is part of the South Florida region and is partially synonymous with the Gold Coast.

Because the population of South Florida is largely confined to a strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades, the Miami urbanized area (that is, the area of contiguous urban development) is about 110 miles (180 km) long (north to south), but never more than 20 miles (32 km) wide, and in some areas only 5 miles (8.0 km) wide (east to west). The MSA is longer than any other urbanized area in the United States except for the New York metropolitan area. It was the eighth most densely populated urbanized area in the United States in the 2000 census.

As of the 2000 census, the urbanized area had a land area of 1,116 square miles (2,890 km2), with a population of 4,919,036, for a population density of 4,407.4 per square mile (1,701.7 per square kilometer). Miami and Hialeah (the second largest city in the metropolitan area) had population densities of more than 10,000 per square mile (more than 3,800 per square kilometer). The Miami Urbanized Area was the fifth largest urbanized area in the United States in the 2000 census.

The Miami metro area also includes several urban clusters (UCs) as of the 2000 Census which are not part of the Miami Urbanized Area. These are the Belle Glade UC, population 24,218, area 20,717,433 square meters and population density of 3027.6 per square mile; Key Biscayne UC, population 10,513, area 4,924,214 square meters and population density of 5529.5 per square mile; Redland UC, population 3,936, area 10,586,212 square meters and population density of 963.0 per square mile; and West Jupiter UC, population 8,998, area 24,737,176 square meters and population density of 942.1 per square mile.

In 2006, the area had an estimated 5,463,857 persons, of which 1,671,398 live in unincorporated areas. Considering that the area has an urban population of 4,919,036, only 544,821 residents live outside of the urban area, meaning that at least 1,126,577 persons live in urban unincorporated areas, but the number is actually higher.

Read more about Miami Metropolitan Area:  Metropolitan Divisions, Cities, Language and National Origin, Education, Climate, Area Codes, Sports, Government, Media

Famous quotes containing the words metropolitan and/or area:

    In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.
    Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)