Chennai (Madras), India

Chennai is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is the biggest industrial and commercial centre in South India,and a major cultural, economic and educational centre. Chennai is known as the "Detroit of India" for its automobile industry.

Chennai is the third-largest city and fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the country and 31st-largest urban area in the world.The area of Chennai (Chennai Corporation) was expanded in September 2011 from 176 km2 (68 sq mi) to 426 km2 (164 sq mi), with a subsequent redefinition bump from 4.6 million to 8.7 million people inside the new city limits during the March 2011 census.

The urban agglomeration may now be considered the city itself (though suburbs do exist beyond the new expanded limits, the metropolitan definition has yet to be updated). As a growing metropolitan city in a developing country, Chennai confronts substantial urban pollution, traffic congestion, poverty, overpopulation, and other logistic and socioeconomic problems.

The city is host to the third-largest expatriate population in India after Mumbai and Delhi, with 35,000 in 2009 and steadily climbing to 82,790 in 2011. Chennai is the only city in South Asia and India to figure in the "52 places to go around the world" by The New York Times. Tourism guide publisher Lonely Planet has named Chennai as one of the top ten cities in the world to visit in 2015. Chennai is ranked as a beta-level city in the Global Cities Index, behind Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore, and ahead of Kolkata, Hyderabad and Colombo.