Greater Houston, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States, encompassing nine counties along the Gulf Coast in Southeast Texas. With a population of 6,997,384 people at the 2018 census estimates and 7,122,240 in 2020, Greater Houston is the second-most populous in Texas after the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The approximately 10,000-square-mile (26,000 km2) region centers on Harris County, the third-most populous county in the U.S., which contains the city of Houston—the largest economic and cultural center of the South—with a population of more than 2.3 million. Greater Houston is part of the Texas Triangle megaregion along with the Dallas–Fort Worth met