Detroit (IPA: ) (French: Détroit, meaning strait, pronounced ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city located north of Windsor, Ontario, on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. It was founded in 1701 by the Frenchman Antoine de Cadillac.
It is known as the world's traditional automotive center—"Detroit" is a metonym for the United States automobile industry—and an important source of popular music, legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames emerged in the twentieth century, including Rock City, The D, D-Town, Hockeytown, and The 3-1-3 (its area code)..
In 2006, Detroit ranked as the United States' eleventh most populous city, with 871,121 residents. At its peak, the city was the 4th largest city in the country, but has steadily declined in population since the 1960's. The name Detroit sometimes refers to the metro Detroit area, a sprawling region with a population of 4,468,966 for the Metropolitan Statistical Area and a population of 5,410,014 for the nine county Combined Statistical Area as of the 2006 Census Bureau estimates. The Windsor-Detroit area, a critical commercial link straddling the Canada-U.S. border, has a total population of about 6,000,000. Detroit's urbanized area population sat at 3,903,377 as of 2000, ranking it ninth largest in the United States.