Phoenix, Arizona in the context of Frederick Taylor Gates

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE (/ˈspiːlbɜːrɡ/ SPEEL-burg; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema and is the highest-grossing film director of all time. Among other accolades, he has received three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and three BAFTA Awards, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, an honorary knighthood in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and the National Medal of Arts in 2023. According to Forbes, he is the wealthiest celebrity.

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television, including Night Gallery and Columbo, he directed the television film Duel (1971), which was approved by Barry Diller. He made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), also beginning his decades-long collaboration with composer John Williams, with whom he has worked with for all but five of his theatrical releases. He became a household name with the summer blockbuster Jaws (1975), and continuously directed more acclaimed escapist box-office blockbusters with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–1989). He also explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).

The following is a list of the 100 largest cities in the Americas by city proper population using the most recent official estimate.

The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of New Mexico's pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.

While the region's boundaries are not officially defined, there have been attempts to do so. One such definition is from the Mojave Desert in California in the west (117° west longitude) to Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the east (104° west longitude); another says that it extends from the Mexico–United States border in the south to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada in the north (39° north latitude). In another definition, the core Southwestern U.S. includes only the states of Arizona and New Mexico; others focus on the land within the old Spanish and Mexican borders of the Nuevo México Province or the later American New Mexico Territory.

Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the fourth-most populous city in Arizona, after Mesa, Tucson, and Phoenix. Chandler is considered to be a part of the East Valley.

As of the 2020 census, the population of Chandler was 275,987, up from 236,123 at the 2010 census. Chandler is a commercial and tech hub for corporations like Intel, Northrop Grumman, Wells Fargo, PayPal and Boeing.

In the context of the 20th-century history of the United States, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration (1916–1940), where the migrants were mainly rural farmers from the South and only came to the Northeast and Midwest.

In the Second Great Migration, not only the Northeast and Midwest continued to be the destination of more than 5 million African Americans, but also the West as well, where cities like Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle offered skilled jobs in the defense industry. Most of these migrants were already urban laborers who came from the cities of the South. In addition, African Americans were still treated with discrimination in parts of the country, and many sought to escape this.

Arizona is a landlocked state in the Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the northwest and California to the west, and shares an international border with the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix, which is the most populous state capital and fifth-most populous city in the United States. Arizona is divided into 15 counties.

Arizona is the sixth-largest state by area and the 14th-most-populous of the 50 states. It is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the Union, achieving statehood on February 14, 1912. Historically part of the territory of Alta California and Nuevo México in New Spain, it became part of independent Mexico in 1821. After being defeated in the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded much of this territory to the United States in 1848, where the area became part of the New Mexico Territory. The southernmost portion of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase.

Namecheap is a U.S. based domain name registrar and web hosting service company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. It was founded in 2000 by Richard Kirkendall. The company provides domain name registration, web hosting, SSL certificates, content delivery network services, email hosting, privacy protection, and other internet-related services.

In September 2025, CVC Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in Namecheap for an undisclosed amount, valuing the company at $1.5 billion.

Tucson (/ˈtuːsɒn/; O'odham: Cuk Ṣon; Spanish: Tucsón) is the county seat of and the most populated city in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona with a population of 542,630 at the 2020 census, behind the capital city Phoenix, while the Tucson metropolitan statistical area has an estimated 1.08 million residents and is the 52nd-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Tucson and Phoenix anchor the Arizona Sun Corridor. The city is 108 miles (174 km) southeast of Phoenix and 60 mi (100 km) north of the United States–Mexico border. It is home to the University of Arizona.

Major incorporated suburbs of Tucson include Oro Valley and Marana northwest of the city, Sahuarita south of the city, and South Tucson in an enclave south of downtown. Communities in the vicinity of Tucson (some within or overlapping the city limits) include Casas Adobes, Catalina Foothills, Flowing Wells, Midvale Park, Tanque Verde, Tortolita, and Vail. Towns outside the Tucson metropolitan area include Three Points, Benson to the southeast, Catalina and Oracle to the north, and Green Valley to the south.

A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car (AC), driverless car, robotic car or robo-car, is a car that is capable of operating with reduced or no human input. They are sometimes called robotaxis, though this term refers specifically to self-driving cars operated for a ridesharing company. Self-driving cars are responsible for all driving activities, such as perceiving the environment, monitoring important systems, and controlling the vehicle, which includes navigating from origin to destination.

As of late 2024, no system has achieved full autonomy (SAE Level 5). In December 2020, Waymo was the first to offer rides in self-driving taxis to the public in limited geographic areas (SAE Level 4), and as of April 2024 offers services in Arizona (Phoenix) and California (San Francisco and Los Angeles). In June 2024, after a Waymo self-driving taxi crashed into a utility pole in Phoenix, Arizona, all 672 of its Jaguar I-Pace vehicles were recalled after they were found to have susceptibility to crashing into pole-like items and had their software updated. In July 2021, DeepRoute.ai started offering self-driving taxi rides in Shenzhen, China. Starting in February 2022, Cruise offered self-driving taxi service in San Francisco, but suspended service in 2023. In 2021, Honda was the first manufacturer to sell an SAE Level 3 car, followed by Mercedes-Benz in 2023.

Jerome is a town in the Black Hills of Yavapai County in the U.S. state of Arizona. Founded in the late 19th century on Cleopatra Hill overlooking the Verde Valley, Jerome is approximately 100 miles (160 km) north of Phoenix along State Route 89A between Sedona and Prescott. Supported in its heyday by rich copper mines, it was home to more than 10,000 people in the 1920s. As of the 2020 census, its population was 464.

The town owes its existence mainly to two ore bodies that formed about 1.75 billion years ago along a ring fault in the caldera of an undersea volcano. Tectonic plate movements, plate collisions, uplift, deposition, erosion, and other geologic processes eventually exposed the tip of one of the ore bodies and pushed the other close to the surface, both near Jerome. In the late 19th century, the United Verde Mine, developed by William A. Clark, extracted ore bearing copper, gold, silver, and other metals from the larger of the two. The United Verde Extension UVX Mine, owned by James Douglas Jr., depended on the other huge deposit. In total, the copper deposits discovered in Jerome's vicinity were among the richest ever found.

Waymo LLC (/ˈweɪmoʊ/ WAY-moh), formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Waymo operates commercial robotaxi services available to the public in Phoenix (Arizona), San Francisco Bay Area (California), Los Angeles (California), Atlanta (Georgia), and Austin (Texas). Waymo services are available to select passengers on a waitlist in Silicon Valley (California). As of April 2025, it offers over 250,000 paid rides per week, totalling over 1 million miles monthly.

The company traces its origins to the Stanford Racing Team, which competed in the 2005 and 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenges. Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009, led by Sebastian Thrun, the former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), and Anthony Levandowski, founder of 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots. After almost two years of road testing, the project was revealed in October 2010. In fall 2015, Google provided "the world's first fully driverless ride on public roads". In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and spun out of Google as part of Alphabet. In October 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer service to the public without safety drivers in the vehicle.

Columbus (/kəˈlʌmbəs/, kə-LUM-bəs) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a population of 905,748 at the 2020 census, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., second-most populous city in the Midwest (after Chicago), and third-most populous U.S. state capital (after Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas). The Columbus metropolitan area, with an estimated 2.23 million residents, is the largest metropolitan area entirely in Ohio and 32nd-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Columbus is the county seat of Franklin County; it also extends into Delaware and Fairfield counties.

Columbus originated as several Native American settlements along the Scioto River. The first European settlement was Franklinton, now a city neighborhood, in 1797. Columbus was founded in 1812 at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers and was named after Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. It was planned as the state capital due to its central location and officially became the capital in 1816. The city grew steadily through the 19th century as a transportation and industrial hub via the National Road, Ohio and Erie Canal, and several railroads. Starting in the 1950s, Columbus experienced rapid suburban growth, becoming Ohio's largest city by area and population by the early 1990s.

Maricopa County (/ˌmærɪˈkoʊpə/) is a county in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census the population was 4,420,568, or about 62% of the state's total, making it the fourth-most populous county in the United States and the most populous county in Arizona, and making Arizona one of the nation's most centralized states. The county seat is Phoenix, the state capital and fifth-most populous city in the United States.

Maricopa County is the central county of the Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Office of Management and Budget renamed the metropolitan area in September 2018. Previously, it was the Phoenix–Mesa–Glendale metropolitan area, and in 2000, that was changed to Phoenix–Mesa–Scottsdale.

The Phoenix metropolitan area, also known as the Valley of the Sun, the Salt River Valley, metro Phoenix, or The Valley, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the Southwestern United States, with its largest principal city being the city of Phoenix. It includes much of central Arizona. The United States Office of Management and Budget designates the area as the Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), defining it as Maricopa and Pinal counties. It anchors the Arizona Sun Corridor megaregion along with the second-most populous metropolitan area in the state, the Tucson metropolitan area. The gross domestic product of the Phoenix metropolitan area was around $400 billion in 2023, 14th highest amongst metro areas in the United States.

As of the 2020 census, the two-county metropolitan area had 4,845,832 residents, making it the 11th largest metropolitan area in the nation by population. Metro Phoenix grew by 652,945 people from April 2010 to April 2020, making it one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. This also contributed to the entire state's exceptional growth; the area is home to just over two-thirds of Arizona's population. The population of the Phoenix metropolitan area increased by 45.3% from 1990 through 2000, compared to the overall U.S. rate of 13.2%, helping make Arizona the second-fastest growing state in the nation in the 1990s behind Nevada. The 2000 census reported the population of the metropolitan area to be 3,251,876. Water insecurity and drought in conjunction with climate change have become a significant concern for the metropolitan area's future growth prospects.

Arizona is a state located in the Western United States. According to the 2020 United States census, Arizona is the 14th most populous state with 7,151,502 inhabitants (as of the 2020 census) and the 6th largest by land area spanning 113,623.1 square miles (294,282 km). Arizona is divided into 15 counties and contains 91 incorporated cities and towns. Incorporated places in Arizona are those that have been granted home rule, possessing a local government in the form of a city or town council. Most of the population is concentrated within the Phoenix metropolitan area, with a 2020 census population of 4,845,832 (67.8% of the state population).

Phoenix is the capital and largest city by population in Arizona with 1,608,139 residents, is ranked as the fifth most populous city in the United States, and land area spanning 517.5 sq mi (1,340 km) as of the 2020 census. The smallest municipality by population and land area is Winkelman with 296 residents in 0.75 sq mi (1.9 km). The oldest incorporated place in Arizona is Tucson which incorporated in 1877 and the most recent was the town of Tusayan which incorporated in March 2010.