Gran Buenos Aires Stadium

Greater Buenos Aires (Spanish: Gran Buenos Aires, GBA), also known as the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (Spanish: Area Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, AMBA), refers to the urban agglomeration comprising the autonomous city of Buenos Aires and the adjacent 24 partidos (districts) in the Province of Buenos Aires. Thus, it does not constitute a single administrative unit. The conurbation spreads south, west and north of Buenos Aires city. To the east, the River Plate serves as a natural boundary.

Urban sprawl, especially between 1945 and 1980, created a vast conurbation of 9,910,282 inhabitants in the 24 conurbated partidos, as of 2010, and a total of 12,801,365 including the City of Buenos Aires, a third of the total population of Argentina and generating more than half of the country's GDP.

History

The term Gran Buenos Aires ("Greater Buenos Aires") was first officially used in 1948, when Governor of Buenos Aires Province Domingo Mercante signed a bill delineating as such an area covering 14 municipalities surrounding the City of Buenos Aires. The term is also related to other expressions that are not necessarily well-defined: the "Buenos Aires' conurbation" (Conurbano Bonaerense), the "Greater Buenos Aires Agglomeration" (Aglomerado Gran Buenos Aires), and the "Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires" (Area Metropolitana Buenos Aires, AMBA).