The City and County of San Francisco

The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,977. The only consolidated city-county in California, it encompasses a land area of 46.7 square miles on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated large city in the United States.

San Francisco is anchor to the 13th-largest metropolitan area in the country, containing 4.3 million, and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.4 million people.or the 2009-2010 season, the San Francisco Bay Area was ranked the 6th largest television market in the United States.

Today, San Francisco is a popular international tourist destination, renowned for its chilly summer fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture and its famous landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Chinatown. The city is also a principal banking and finance center, and the home of over 30 international financial institutions, helping to make San Francisco eighteenth place in the world's top producing cities, ninth in the United States, and is fifteenth place in the top twenty Global Financial Centers.