The Southwestern United States (Spanish: Suroeste de Estados Unidos; also known as the American Southwest) is the informal name for a region of the western United States. Definitions of the region's boundaries vary a great deal and have never been standardized, though many boundaries have been proposed.[2] For example, one definition includes the stretch from the Mojave Desert in California (117° west longitude) to Carlsbad, New Mexico (104° west longitude), and from the Mexico–United States border to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada (39° north latitude).[3] The largest metropolitan areas are centered around Phoenix (with an estimated population of more than 4.7 million as of 2017), Las Vegas (more than 2.2 million), Tucson (more than 1 million), Albuquerque (more than 900,000), and El Paso (more than 840,000).[4] Those five metropolitan areas have an estimated total population of more than 9.6 million as of 2017, with nearly 60 percent of them living in the two Arizona cities—Phoenix and Tucson.
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the American Northeast or simply the Northeast, is a geographical region of the United States bordered to the north by Canada, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Southern United States, and to the west by the Midwestern United States. The Northeast is one of the four regions defined by the United States Census Bureau for the collection and analysis of statistics.[1]
The Census Bureau-defined region has a total area of 181,324 sq mi (469,630 km2) with 162,257 sq mi (420,240 km2) of that being land mass.[2] Although it lacks a unified cultural identity, the Northeastern region is the nation's most economically developed, densely populated, and culturally diverse region.[3][4] Of the nation's four census regions, the Northeast is the second most urban, with 85 percent of its population residing in urban areas, led by the West with 90 percent.[5]
