The Greater Los Angeles Area, or the Southland, (not to be confused with the Los Angeles Metro Area which only includes Los Angeles and Orange Counties) is the agglomeration of urbanized area around the county of Los Angeles, California, United States. Greater Los Angeles includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area (Los Angeles & Orange Counties) as well as the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario Metropolitan Area, and the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura Metro Area. San Diego and Imperial Counties, while a part of Southern California, are not included in this agglomeration.

It is the most commonly used term for the Combined Statistical Area (a group of interacting metropolitan areas) sprawled over five counties in the southern part of California, namely Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County, Riverside County and Ventura County. A common unofficial definition includes the region ranging from Ventura County to the southwestern area of San Bernardino County. It is not always meaningful to refer to Los Angeles as a distinct city, and people outside of Southern California often refer to the entire region as L.A. even though it includes five counties, more than 100 distinct municipalities, and more people than any individual state except for Texas, New York, Florida, and California itself.

The region contains some of the most affluent areas of the country. It has been one of the fastest growing regions in the United States for decades, first in Los Angeles County, then Orange County, and now in the Inland Empire. As of 2005, the official estimate of the population of the Los Angeles metropolitan area is more than 12.9 million, while the larger five-county region has a population of over 17.6 million. Either definition makes it the second-largest core-based statistical area in the country, behind the New York metropolitan area.

The U.S. Bureau of the Census has designated the five county region as the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside combined statistical area, with a July 1, 2006 population estimate of 17,776,000 . According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a total area of 4,850 square miles (12,562 km²), while the wider combined statistical area covers 33,954 square miles (87,941 km²), but more than half of this is the sparsely populated eastern areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.