New York metropolitan area
The New York metropolitan area, also called the Tri-State area and sometimes referred to as Greater New York, is the largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a gross metropolitan product of over US$2.6 trillion. It is also the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass, encompassing 4,669.0 sq mi (12,093 km2). Among the most populous metro areas in the world, New York is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the only one with more than 20 million residents according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
The core of this vast area, the New York metropolitan statistical area, includes New York City and much of Downstate New York (Long Island as well as the mid- and lower Hudson Valley) and the suburbs of northern and central New Jersey (including that state's eleven largest municipalities). The phrase Tri-State area is used to refer to the larger urbanized area of Downstate New York, northern New Jersey, and western Connecticut. An increasing number of people who work in New York City also commute from Pennsylvania, particularly from the Lehigh Valley, Bucks County, and Poconos regions in eastern Pennsylvania, creating an even larger urban region that spans four states: the New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA combined statistical area.
The New York metropolitan statistical area was in 2020 the most populous in the United States, with 20.1 million residents, or slightly over 6% of the nation's total population. The combined statistical area includes 23.6 million residents as of 2020. It is one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world. The New York metropolitan area continues to be the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States, having the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The metropolitan statistical area covers 6,140 sq mi (15,903 km2) while the combined statistical area is 13,318 sq mi (34,493 km2), encompassing an ethnically and geographically diverse region. The New York metropolitan area's population is larger than that of the state of New York, and the metropolitan airspace accommodated over 130 million passengers in 2016.
Greater New York, known as the financial capital of the world, is also the hub of multiple industries, including health care, pharmaceuticals, and scientific output in life sciences, international trade, publishing, real estate, education, fashion, entertainment, tourism, law, and manufacturing; and if the New York metropolitan area were an independent sovereign state, it would constitute the eighth-largest economy in the world. It is the most prominent financial, diplomatic, and media hub in the world.
According to Forbes, in 2014, the New York metropolitan area was home to eight of the top ten ZIP Codes in the United States by median housing price, with six in Manhattan alone. The New York metropolitan area is known for its varied landscape and natural beauty, and contains five of the top ten richest places in America, according to Bloomberg. These are Scarsdale, New York; Short Hills, New Jersey; Old Greenwich, Connecticut; Bronxville, New York; and Darien, Connecticut. The New York metropolitan region's higher education network comprises hundreds of colleges and universities, including campuses of four Ivy League universities: Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Cornell (at Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine); the flagship campuses of public universities systems at Stony Brook (SUNY), Rutgers (New Jersey), New Jersey Institute of Technology; and globally-ranked New York University, Rockefeller University, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.