Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands county of England. It is the most populous British city outside London, with a population of 1,028,701 (2009 estimate), and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the United Kingdom’s second most populous urban area with a population of 2,284,093 (2001 census). Birmingham’s metropolitan area, which includes surrounding towns to which it is closely tied through commuting, is also the United Kingdom’s second most populous with a population of 3,683,000.