Chūkyō metropolitan area

Chūkyō (中京圏, Chūkyō-ken), or the Chūkyō region (中京地方, Chūkyō-chihō), is a major metropolitan area in Japan that is centered on the city of Nagoya (the "Chūkyō", i.e., the "capital in the middle") in Aichi Prefecture. The area makes up the most urbanized part of the Tōkai region. The population is 9,439,000 in 3,704 square kilometers of built-up land area. Nevertheless, like most of Japan's major metro areas, the core of it lies on a fertile alluvial plain, in this case, the Nōbi Plain.

It is among the 50 most populous metropolitan areas in the world, and is the third most populous metropolitan area in Japan (after Greater Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto), containing roughly 7% of Japan's population. Historically, this region has taken a back seat to the other two power centers, both politically and economically; however, the agglomeration of Nagoya is the world's 22nd-largest metro area economy, in terms of gross metropolitan product at purchasing power parity in 2014, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. The GDP of Greater Nagoya, Nagoya Metropolitan Employment Area, was US$256.3 billion in 2010.