Lubbock (/ˈlʌbək/ LUB-ək)[7] is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Lubbock County. With a population of 266,878 in 2023,[3] the city is the 10th-most populous city in Texas and the 84th-most populous in the United States.[8] The city is in the northwestern part of the state, in the Great Plains region, an area known historically and geographically as the Llano Estacado, and ecologically is part of the southern end of the High Plains, lying at the economic center of the Lubbock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 360,104 in 2023.[5] Lubbock's nickname, "Hub City", derives from it being the economic, educational, and health-care hub of the multicounty region, north of the Permian Basin and south of the Texas Panhandle, commonly called the South Plains.[9] The area is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world[10][11] and is heavily dependent on water from the Ogallala Aquifer for irrigation.