Kitchener is located in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, about 100 kilometers west of Toronto. The city was known as Town of Berlin between 1854 and 1912, and between 1912 and 1916, it was known as the City of Berlin. As of 2016, Kitchener had a population of 233,222 and a land area of 136.86 square kilometers.
The Kitchener metropolitan area is the tenth largest Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) in Canada and fourth largest in Ontario, with a population of 523,894 people. This metropolitan area includes neighboring cities such as Cambridge and Waterloo.
Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge make up the “Tri-Cities” in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo; the municipality was created in 1973. The first two, namely Kitchener and Waterloo are jointly referred to as “Kitchener-Waterloo” or (K-W). The two are thought to be twin cities.
Manufacturing is the core economic activity in Kitchener. The ubiquity of industrial artifacts in the city is a testament to this. Although the reliance on manufacturing has reduced, it accounted for 20.36% of the city’s employment in 2012. Furthermore, there are four municipal business parks in the city of Kitchener. These include the Grand River West Business Park, the Bridgeport Business Park, Lancaster Corporate Center, and the Huron Business Park.
The largest of the four parks is the Huron Business Park. It houses several industries including furniture components and seat manufacturing. Also, the city has international recognition when it comes to finance and insurance, digital media, as well as manufacturing clusters. Moreover, health sciences clusters are becoming evident in the city in the recent time.
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