Greater Toronto area
| Greater Toronto Area | |
|---|---|
| Metropolitan Area | |
|
|
| Country |
 Canada
|
| Province |
 Ontario
|
| Area | |
| • Total | 7,124.15 km2 (2,750.65 sq mi) |
| Population (2011) | |
| • Total | 6,054,191 |
| • Density | 849/km2 (2,199/sq mi) |
| Combined population of Halton, Peel, Toronto, York, Durham | |
| Time zone | EST (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
| Postal Code | L, M |
| Area code(s) | 226, 249, 289, 416, 437, 519, 647, 705, 905 |
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The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is the most populous metropolitan area in Canada. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 6,054,191, and the census metropolitan area had a population of 5,583,064. The Greater Toronto Area is defined as the central city of Toronto, and the four regional municipalities that surround it: Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. The regional span of the Greater Toronto Area is sometimes combined with the city of Hamilton, Ontario and its surrounding region, to form the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The Greater Toronto Area is the northern part of the Golden Horseshoe.
The term Greater Toronto has been used in writing as early as the 1900s, although at the time, the term only referred to the old City of Toronto and its immediate townships and villages, which became Metropolitan Toronto in 1954 and became the current city of Toronto in 1998. The usage of the term involving the four regional municipalities came into formal use in the mid-1980s, after it was used in a widely discussed report on municipal governance restructuring in the region and was later made official as a provincial planning area. However, it did not come into everyday usage until the mid- to late 1990s. In 2006, the term began to be supplanted in the field of spatial planning as provincial policy increasingly began to refer to either the "Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area" (GTHA) or the still-broader "Greater Golden Horseshoe". The latter includes communities like Barrie, Guelph and the Niagara Region. The GTA continues, however, to be in official use elsewhere in the Government of Ontario, such as the Ministry of Finance.
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