Tampa is a United States city in Hillsborough County, on the west coast of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County.[3]. The population of Tampa in 2000 was 303,447. According to the 2008 Census estimate, the city has a population of 382,088.
Tampa is a part of the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area, most commonly referred to as the "Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL MSA." The four-county area is composed of roughly 2.7 million residents, making it the second largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the state, and the third largest in the Southeastern United States behind Miami and Atlanta.