Mega Manila

Mega Manila is the term used for the megalopolis in the Philippine regions of Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Mimaropa and Metro Manila. It is frequently used in the press, advertising, television, and radio to refer to provinces bound to Manila, in contrast to the term Greater Manila Area, which is academically used to describe the urbanization process that has long spilled out of Metro Manila's borders, also known as the built-up area. Mapping out the built-up area around Manila requires finer granularity than the more generic term Mega Manila.

Mega Manila is used in general reference to the relationship of Metro Manila to surrounding provinces. It references only provinces and not the exact settlement patterns of cities, towns, and barangays, which may be urban, suburban, mountains, or rural areas that are still part of provinces close enough to Manila to be lumped into the definition.

Mega Manila, as a loose metropolitan area defined by the Philippine Information Agency (PIA), is divided into the national capital region (Metro Manila) and the suburbs of regions 3 (Central Luzon) and 4 (Calabarzon and Mimaropa). Mega Manila's 2010 population is projected at 35,607,000, or 37.8% of the country's population, and covers roughly half of Luzon, about 50,000 square kilometers, including many rural areas.

TV ratings agency AGB Nielsen Philippines and Kantar Media Philippines consider Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal as "Mega Manila" for their TV ratings gathering (area highlighted in blue on the map), a much stricter definition than the PIA. Using census population in 2010 the area has a population of 25,066,000 or about 26.6% of the population in an area roughly the size of Los Angeles County and average density over 2000 people per square kilometer. As a comparison, only the cities of Tokyo, Jakarta, and Mexico City have reached 25 million people, Shanghai may have but there is not enough detail in suburban statistics on it. Both Mega Manila definitions only include entire provinces, without finer detail.

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