Greater Vancouver

Greater Vancouver, also known as Metro Vancouver, is the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada, after Greater Toronto and Greater Montreal. The term Greater Vancouver describes an area that is roughly coterminous with the region governed by the Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD), though it predates the 1966 creation of the regional district. It is often used to include areas beyond the boundaries of the regional district but does not generally include wilderness and agricultural areas that are included within the MVRD.

Usage of the term Greater Vancouver is not consistent. In local use, it tends to refer to urban and suburban areas only and does not include parts of the regional district such as Bowen Island, although industries such as the film industry even include Squamish, Whistler and Hope as being in "the Vancouver area" or "in Greater Vancouver". The business community often includes adjoining towns and cities such as Mission, Chilliwack, Abbotsford and Squamish within their use of the term Greater Vancouver, though since the creation of the Metro Vancouver Vancouver Regional District, the term Metro Vancouver has come to be used in the media interchangeably with Greater Vancouver.

As a geographic region, Greater Vancouver is part of the Lower Mainland, one of British Columbia's three main geospatial/cultural divisions, and overlaps with the Lower Fraser Valley, with the Central and Upper Fraser Valley areas to the east being in the Fraser Valley Regional District, which was created from two others upon the expansion of the Greater Vancouver Regional District to include Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Other forms of regional governance and administration whose jurisdiction Greater Vancouver is in are the North Vancouver and Coquitlam Forests Districts, and the Ministry of Environment's Lower Mainland Region (which includes the Sunshine Coast, the Fraser Health Authority and the New Westminster Land District, among others).