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The Greater Los Angeles Area is the urban area around Los Angeles, California. This informal term is synonymous with the term The Southland, a name mostly used by local news outlets.
The scope of the term has been variously used to include one to five Southern California counties. At its more compact, the term means Los Angeles County. At its broadest, the term referred to the entire Los Angeles--Riverside--Orange County, CA CMSA, which geographically encompassed large extents of sparsely populated mountain and desert. (This CMSA definition is no longer used after the Los Angeles metropolitan boundaries were realigned by the United States Office of Management and Budget in mid-1993).
Depending upon how one draws the boundaries, the Greater Los Angeles area is home to approximately 15 to 17 million people. It sprawls over 120 miles from Ventura in the west to San Bernardino in the east; and over 90 miles from San Clemente in the south to Lancaster in the north.
For a complete list, please see List of towns in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
See also United States metropolitan area