Ciudad Juárez, abbreviated Cd. Juárez, also known as Juárez and formerly known as El Paso del Norte, is a city and seat of the municipality of Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Juárez's estimated population is 1.5 million people. The city lies on the Rio Grande, south of El Paso, Texas. El Paso and Ciudad Juárez comprise one of the largest bi-national metropolitan areas in the world with a combined population of 2.4 million people. It is one of the fastest growing cities in the world despite being called "the most violent zone in the world outside of declared war zones." In 2001 the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas published a report stating that in Ciudad Juárez “the average annual growth over the 10-year period 1990-2000 was 5.3 percent. Juárez experienced much higher population growth than the state of Chihuahua and than Mexico as a whole.