Scranton is the sixth-largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is the county seat and largest city of Lackawanna County in Northeastern Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley. With an estimated population in 2019 of 76,653, Scranton is the largest city in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of about 570,000. It hosts a federal court building for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The city is conventionally divided into nine districts: North Scranton, Southside, Westside, the Hill Section, Central City, Minooka, East Mountain, Providence and Green Ridge, though these areas do not have legal status.
Scranton is the geographic and cultural center of the Lackawanna River valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as the largest of the former anthracite coal mining communities in a contiguous quilt-work that also includes Wilkes-Barre, Nanticoke, Pittston and Carbondale. Scranton was incorporated on February 14, 1856, as a borough in Luzerne County and as a city on April 23, 1866.