Metropolitan areas of Mexico

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Metropolitan areas in Mexico have been traditionally defined as the group of municipalities that heavily interact with each other, usually around a core city.^[1] In 2004, a joint effort between CONAPO, INEGI and the Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL) agreed to define metropolitan areas as either:^[1]

• the group of two or more municipalities in which a city with a population of at least 50,000 is located whose urban area extends over the limit of the municipality that originally contained the core city incorporating either physically or under its area of direct influence other adjacent predominantly urban municipalities all of which have a high degree of social and economic integration or are relevant for urban politics and administration; or
• a single municipality in which a city of a population of at least one million is located and fully contained, (that is, it does not transcend the limits of a single municipality); or
• a city with a population of at least 250,000 which forms a conurbation with other cities in the United States.

It should be noted, however, that northwestern and southeastern states are divided into a small number of large municipalities whereas central states are divided into a large number of smaller municipalities. As such, metropolitan areas in the northwest usually do not extend over more than one municipality (and figures usually report population for the entire municipality) whereas metropolitan areas in the center extend over many municipalities.

Few metropolitan areas extend beyond the limits of one state, namely: Greater Mexico City (Federal District, Mexico and Hidalgo), Puebla-Tlaxcala (Puebla and Tlaxcala, but excludes the city of Tlaxcala), Comarca Lagunera (Coahuila and Durango), and Tampico (Tamaulipas and Veracruz).

Contents 1 Largest metropolitan areas of Mexico by population 2 Transnational conurbations 3 Megalopolis of central Mexico 4 See also 5 References

[edit] Largest metropolitan areas of Mexico by population

Population of the 30 biggest metropolitan areas in Mexico as reported in the 2005 Census:^[2]

Rank	Name	Population[3]
01	Greater Mexico City	19,231,829
02	Greater Guadalajara	4,095,853
03	Greater Monterrey	3,664,331
04	Puebla-Tlaxcala	2,109,049
05	Greater Toluca	1,610,786
06	Tijuana	1,483,992
07	León	1,425,210
08	Juárez	1,313,338
09	La Laguna	1,110,890
10	San Luis Potosí-Soledad de Graciano Sánchez	957,753
11	Santiago de Querétaro	918,100
12	Mérida	897,740
*[4]	Mexicali	855,962
13	Aguascalientes	805,666
14	Tampico	803,196
*[5]	Culiacán	793,730
15	Cuernavaca	787,556
16	Acapulco	786,830
17	Chihuahua	784,882
18	Morelia	735,624
19	Saltillo	725,259
20	Veracruz	702,394
21	Villahermosa	644,629
*	Hermosillo	707,890
22	Reynosa-Río Bravo	633,730
23	Cancún	586,288
24	Tuxtla Gutiérrez	576,872
25	Xalapa	545,567
26	Oaxaca	504,159
27	Matamoros	462,157
28	Poza Rica	458,330
29	Pachuca	438,692
30	Orizaba	381,086
31	Tepic	379,296
32	Cuautla	368,543
33	Nuevo Laredo	355,827
34	Minatitlán	330,781
35	Coatzacoalcos	321,182
36	Puerto Vallarta	304,107
37	Monclova-Frontera	294,191
38	Córdoba	293,768
39	Tlaxcala	275,182
40	Zacatecas-Guadalupe	261,422
41	Colima-Villa de Álvarez	232,394
42	Zamora-Jacona	230,777
43	La Piedad	229,289
44	Tulancingo	204,708
45	Guaymas	184,816
46	Tula	184,691
47	Apizaco	182,473
48	Piedras Negras	169,771
49	San Francisco del Rincón	159,127
50	Ocotlán	133,157
51	San Martín Texmelucan	154,253
52	Rioverde-Ciudad Fernández	126,997
53	Ciudad Acuña	126,238
54	Tecomán	123,089
55	Acayucan	105,552
56	Moroleón-Uriangato	99,828

[edit] Transnational conurbations

Metropolitan areas located at the border with the United States also form transnational conurbations with deep economic and demographic interaction. CONAPO also defines and recognizes the existence of such metropolitan areas and defines them as the municipalities that contain a city of at least 250,000 inhabitants which share processes of conurbation with cities of the United States of America.^[1] Transnational conurbations are:

Rank	Name	Population[6]
01	Tijuana-San Diego	4,922,723
02	Ciudad Juárez-El Paso	2,345,182
03	Reynosa-McAllen	1,109,664
04	Matamoros-Brownsville	1,019,207
05	Mexicali-Calexico	944,319
06	Nuevo Laredo-Laredo	718,073
07	Piedras Negras-Eagle Pass	192,184
08	Ciudad Acuña-Del Rio	150,000

[edit] Megalopolis of central Mexico

A megalopolis is defined as a long chain of continuous metropolitan areas, or territories that are relatively integrated amongst each other, a clear example of which is BosWash in the United States. In 1996, the Programa General de Desarollo Urbano del Distrito Federal first proposed this concept to refer to the megalopolis of central Mexico, which was later expanded by PROAIRE, a metropolitan commission on the environment.^[7] A megalopolis, is known in Spanish as a corona regional de ciudades ("regional ring of cities"). The Megalopolis of central Mexico was defined to be integrated by the metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Puebla, Cuernavaca, Toluca and Pachuca, which may also conform complex subregional rings themselves (i.e. Greater Puebla conforming a regional ring with Atlixco, San Martín Texmelucan, Tlaxcala and Apizaco). The megalopolis of central Mexico is integrated by 173 municipalities (91 of the state of Mexico, 29 of the state of Puebla, 37 of the state of Tlaxcala, 16 of Morelos and 16 of Hidalgo) and the 16 boroughs of the Federal District,^[7] with an approximate total population of almost 25 million people.

[edit] See also

• Municipalities of Mexico
• Demographics of Mexico

[edit] References