page_title: Greater Toronto Area
section_title: Census metropolitan area
hierarchical_section_title: Greater Toronto Area / Census metropolitan area
caption_attribution_description: DSC_0160
context_page_description: The Greater Toronto Area is the most populous metropolitan area in Canada. It includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York; which in total contain 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The southwestern periphery of the Greater Toronto Area begins in Burlington in Halton Region, and extends along Lake Ontario past downtown Toronto eastward to Clarington in Durham Region. Durham Region holds the northernmost municipality in the GTA, although a number of municipalities in the northern periphery of Greater Toronto are situated in York Region.
  According to the 2016 census, the Greater Toronto Area has a total population of 6,417,516.
  The Greater Toronto Area is a part of several larger areas in southern Ontario. The GTA and the city Hamilton are collectively referred to as the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The GTHA, alongside the Niagara Region, also form the core regions of the Golden Horseshoe.
context_section_description: Some municipalities considered part of the GTA are not within the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), whose land area (5,904 km² in 2006) and population (5,928,040 as of the 2016 census) is thus smaller than the land area and population of the GTA planning area. For example, Oshawa is the centre of its own CMA, yet deemed part of the Greater Toronto Area, while other municipalities, such as New Tecumseth in southern Simcoe County and Mono Township in Dufferin County are included in the Toronto CMA but not in the GTA. These different border configurations result in the GTA's population being higher than the Toronto CMA by nearly one-half million people, often leading to confusion amongst people when trying to sort out Toronto's urban population.
  Other nearby urban areas, such as Hamilton, Barrie, St. Catharines-Niagara or Kitchener-Waterloo, are not part of the GTA or the Toronto CMA, but form their own CMAs near the GTA. Ultimately, all the aforementioned places are part of the Greater Golden Horseshoe metropolitan region, an urban agglomeration, which is the fourth most populous in North America. When the Hamilton, Oshawa and Toronto CMAs are agglomerated with Brock and Scugog, they have a population of 6,170,072. It is part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis, containing an estimated 59 million people in 2011.
caption: Toronto is the largest municipality in the GTA, acting as the area's core.
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