Greater Boston

Greater Boston is the metropolitan region of New England encompassing the municipality of Boston (the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England) and its surrounding areas. The region forms the northern arc of the Northeast megalopolis, so Greater Boston means both a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and a combined statistical area (CSA), which is broader. The MSA consists of most of the eastern third of Massachusetts, excluding the South Coast and Cape Cod; the CSA additionally includes the municipalities of Providence (capital of Rhode Island), Manchester (the largest city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire), Worcester (the second largest city in Massachusetts and in New England), the South Coast region, and Cape Cod. While the city of Boston covers 48.4 square miles (125 km²) and has 675,647 residents as of the 2020 census, the urbanization has extended well into surrounding areas and the CSA has a more than 8.4 million people, making it one of the most populous such regions in the U.S. The CSA is one of two in Massachusetts, the other being Greater Springfield. Greater Boston is the only CSA in New England that lies in three states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island); some definitions extend it into a fourth (Connecticut).