page_title: Greater Pittsburgh Region
section_title: Boundaries
hierarchical_section_title: Greater Pittsburgh Region / Boundaries
context_page_description: The Greater Pittsburgh Region is a populous region in the United States which is named for its largest city and economic center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There are several official and unofficial boundary definitions which may be used to describe this region. In the most restrictive definition, the region encompasses Pittsburgh's urban core county, Allegheny, and six nearby Pennsylvania counties.
  Garrett Nelson and Alasdair Rae's recent analysis of American commuter flows, "An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Megaregions", identified the Pittsburgh megaregion as a region encompassing the entirety or significant portions of 54 counties in Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, Northern West Virginia, and Western Maryland. By this definition, the informal regional boundaries are similar to historical interpretations where the region is defined as the central portion of the Allegheny Plateau to the west and north of the Allegheny Front and south of Lake Erie and Pennsylvania's Northern Tier.
context_section_description: As noted, there are no specific formal boundaries for the Greater Pittsburgh Region but the most liberal definition of the region's boundaries based on commuting patterns includes twenty-eight Pennsylvania counties (Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Fayette, Forest, Greene, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mercer, Mifflin, Somerset, Venango, Warren, Washington, and Westmoreland), nineteen West Virginia counties (Barbour, Brooke, Doddridge, Grant, Hancock, Harrison, Lewis, Marion, Marshall, Mineral, Monongalia, Ohio, Preston, Randolph, Taylor, Tucker, Tyler, Upshur, and Wetzel), five Ohio counties (Belmont, Columbiana, Harrison, Jefferson, and Monroe), and two Maryland counties (Allegany and Garrett). The combined population of the megaregion was over 4.9 million in 2016.
  There are also several formal definitions of Greater Pittsburgh which are often used in media mentions of the region. These include the Office of Management and Budget's Pittsburgh, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, PA-OH-WV Combined Statistical Area (CSA). The Nielsen Corporation's Pittsburgh Designated Market Area (DMA) is another commonly used formal definition of the region. There are nineteen counties included in at least one of these definitions and their combined population was over 2.9 million in 2016.
  Many of the area's residents would probably dispute the inclusion of the State College, Johnstown, Altoona, Erie and West Virginia counties south of Morgantown in the Greater Pittsburgh Region. There is, nevertheless, a degree of interconnectedness between these areas and the formally designated Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
caption: Border of Pittsburgh Megaregion showing included counties[10]