Carolina Municipio area

Population and density of Carolina Municipio

The Census Bureau estimates that 149,874 people lived in Carolina Municipio on July 1, 2025. That ranks #468 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #3 of 78 in Puerto Rico. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 154,814, the population has declined by 4,940 (−3.2%), compared with −3.1% for Puerto Rico as a whole.

With 45.4 square miles of land, that is 3,304 people per square mile (1,276 per km²), placing Carolina Municipio #35 nationally for density and #4 in Puerto Rico. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Puerto Rico median is 754. Put another way, there are about 0.194 acres of land per resident.

U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 population estimates. Estimates are revised each year and are not decennial census counts. Density divides the whole population by the whole county’s land area, so it describes an average, not how settlement is distributed within the county. Population sources and methods.

Cities and towns in Carolina Municipio

Puerto Rico has no incorporated places below the municipio: Carolina Municipio is itself the local government. The Census Bureau describes the settlements inside it, such as zonas urbanas and comunidades, as statistical places, and publishes no separate annual estimates for them.

Metropolitan area

Carolina Municipio is a central county of the San Juan-Bayamón-Caguas, PR Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 40 county equivalents have 2,024,195 residents on 1,437.8 square miles of land; Carolina Municipio accounts for 3.2% of the land and 7.4% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #229 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #36 by population. It belongs to the San Juan-Bayamón, PR Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

7 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Carolina Municipio; 5 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

00924009760097900982009830098500987

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the Census Bureau’s approximations of USPS ZIP Code service areas, from the 2020 Census relationship files. Lighter codes have less than half of their land in this county. Post-office-box and single-address ZIP Codes have no tabulation area.

Counties bordering Carolina Municipio

Carolina Municipio shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. It has more land than 4 of them. The largest neighbor is San Juan Municipio (47.9 mi²) and the smallest is Loíza Municipio (19.4 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Carolina Municipio forms a block of 194.2 mi² of land, of which it holds 23.4%.

How big is Carolina Municipio compared with U.S. states?

Carolina Municipio has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 23 times as much. Puerto Rico’s county land could hold about 75 areas the size of Carolina Municipio.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 6.73 miles (10.8 km) on each side. Real county shapes are rarely square, so this is a scale reference rather than a width or driving distance.

State figures are the sums of each state’s county-equivalent land measurements in the same Census release, so states and counties are compared on the same basis. Published state totals can differ slightly because of rounding. Compare all states · Counties bigger than entire states.

What stands out about Carolina Municipio?

Carolina Municipio has more land than 82 of the other 3,221 county equivalents in the dataset.

A median is the middle county-equivalent measurement, not the average of the largest and smallest. All three bars use the same linear scale. Very small areas may appear as a thin sliver; the labels retain their values.

Does including water change its rank?

Using land plus water places Carolina Municipio at #3,145 nationally by total area, 5 places farther from the top than its land rank. Other county equivalents gain more area when their water measurements are included.

Its water share is 24.8%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 23.6 percentage points higher. This describes the statistical geography’s land/water mix, not flood exposure or developable land.

Closest positions in the national land ranking

These entries sit immediately beside Carolina Municipio in the national ranking. They can be in different states and are not necessarily geographic neighbors.

Calculated from the same Census release as the area table. Total-area order uses original ALAND + AWATER; water shares and chart labels use published square miles. Calculation details.