The Metropolitan District of Quito, abbreviated Quito D. M., is a Metropolitan District of the province of Pichincha in the north of Ecuador. It is the jurisdiction formed on the basis of the Municipality of the capital of the Republic, founded in 1534, the city of San Francisco de Quito and its nearby towns, which form an important conurbation, seat of national political power. The Metropolitan District of Quito: is the most populated canton of the country. It is divided into 9 Zonal Administrations, which contain 32 urban parishes and 33 rural and suburban parishes. The urban parishes are divided into neighborhoods.
The creation process of the metropolitan district is inconclusive, since a statute of autonomy and a popular consultation according to the Organic Code of Territorial Organization Autonomy and Decentralization is needed. In 1993, the Regime Law for the Metropolitan District of Quito was promulgated, according to which the Municipality of the capital assumed more powers, such as transportation, which at that time was the responsibility of the National Government. Today, with the 2008 Constitution to Quito as a Metropolitan District, it has to assume the competencies of the cantonal, provincial and regional governments, thus making it a "city-district-region". In Ecuador, following the promulgation of the Constitution of 2008, it was created a new territorial unit called the region, so the country is divided into 9 regions and autonomous districts, 2 autonomous metropolitan districts and one special regime.
The Metropolitan District is synonymous with the metropolitan area, since the one of Quito includes the urban area of the capital city, as well as the neighboring rural parishes, among them Tababela, where the main airport of the country is currently located, the Mariscal Sucre International Airport. The population of the zone is of 2 505 344, without counting the Rumiñahui Canton, that although it is conurbado belongs to another territorial circumscription. Despite these administrative divisions, thousands of people who work in Quito travel daily from the Valley to the capital hypercenter, which is connected by the General Rumiñahui highway. Several citizen movements ask for the gratuity of this route, where toll is currently charged, arguing the evident condition of the localities of the Valley of a suburb of the capital. The Metropolitan District borders the small Rumiñahui canton, whose municipality is located in the town of Sangolquí. Its jurisdiction includes good part of the Valley of the Chillos, considered a suburb of the capital.
The Valley of Tumbaco-Cumbayá and the semi-desert valley of San Antonio de Pichincha, located east and north of the center of the capital, are also considered neighborhoods of the city, although technically they are outside their urban limits.