Southern California

Southern California (also known as SoCal or Sur de California in Spanish) is a geographical and cultural area that usually encompasses the southern part of the United States state of California. Included in this region is the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which is the second most populous urban agglomeration in the United States after New York City. Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties are among the 10 counties that make up the area, which includes the state's 58 counties. On the eastern border of southern California's border with Arizona, the Colorado Desert and the Colorado River are situated, while San Bernardino County shares a border with Nevada on the northeastern side. The southern border of Southern California with Baja California is a section of the boundary between Mexico and the United States.

A substantial percentage of Southern California is consisted of the heavily populated urban area that stretches along the Pacific coast from Ventura County through Greater Los Angeles County and down to Greater San Diego (the contiguous urban area in fact extending into Tijuana, Mexico), and inland to the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley (Palm Springs area). It consists of eight metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), three of which combine to create the Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area (CSA), which has more than 18 million inhabitants and is the second-largest CSA behind the New York CSA in terms of population size. The three metropolitan statistical areas are as follows: the Los Angeles metropolitan area (which includes Los Angeles and Orange counties and has a population of 13.3 million people), the Inland Empire (which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties and includes the Coachella Valley cities and has a population of 4.3 million people), and the Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura metropolitan area (which has a population of 4.3 million people) (0.8 million people). The Southern California region also includes the San Diego metropolitan area, which has a population of 3.3 million people, the Bakersfield metro area, which has a population of 0.9 million, and the metropolitan areas like Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and El Centro (Imperial County).