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Greater St. Louis is a bi-state metropolitan area that completely surrounds and includes the independent city of St. Louis, the principal city. It includes parts of both Missouri and Illinois. The city core is on the Mississippi Riverfront on the border with Illinois in the geographic center of the metro area. The Mississippi River bisects the metro area geographically between Illinois and Missouri; however, the Missouri portion is much more populous. St. Louis is the focus of the largest metro area in Missouri and the Illinois portion known as Metro East is the second largest metropolitan area in that state. St. Louis County is independent of the City of St. Louis and their two populations are generally tabulated separately. The St. Louis, MO-IL metropolitan statistical area (MSA)—and the focus of this page—includes the City of St. Louis; the Illinois counties of Bond, Calhoun, Clinton, Jersey, Macoupin, Madison, Monroe, and St. Clair (known collectively as the Metro East); and the Missouri counties of Crawford (only the City of Sullivan), Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, St. Charles, St. Louis (separate from and not inclusive of the city of St. Louis), and Warren. The larger St. Louis–St. Charles–Farmington, MO–IL combined statistical area (CSA) includes all of the aforementioned MSA, plus the Farmington, MO micropolitan statistical area, which includes St. Francois County, Missouri, and the Centralia, IL micropolitan statistical area, which includes Marion County, Illinois. In 2020, the St. Louis MSA was the 21st-largest in the nation with a population of 2,820,253. The larger CSA is ranked 20th-largest in the United States, with a population of 2,909,003. Due to slow growth in the St. Louis area paired with comparatively rapid growth in the Sun Belt, the St. Louis MSA fell out of the top 20 largest MSAs in the United States in 2017 for the first time since 1840. As of 2018, Greater St. Louis is home to the headquarters of ten of Missouri's eleven Fortune 500 companies, six Fortune 1,000 companies, and two of the top 30 largest private companies in America, as ranked by Forbes. The metropolitan area received the All-America City Award in 2008.
