a key regional centre.
The city's suburbs, the most important of which are Godoy Cruz, Guaymallén, Las Heras, Luján de Cuyo, and Maipú, have in recent decades far outpaced the city proper in population. Comprising half the metro area population of 212,000 in 1947, these suburbs grew to nearly 7/8 of the total metro area of 894,000 by 2009, making Mendoza the most dispersed metro area in Argentina
