Brooklyn is the most populous borough of New York City, with a census-estimated 2,629,150 residents in 2016. It borders the borough of Queens at the southwestern end of the same Long Island, and has several bridge connections to the nearby boroughs of Staten Island and Manhattan. Since 1896, the borough has been coterminous with Kings County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of New York and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after the county of New York.With a land area of 71 square miles and water area of 26 square miles, Kings County is New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area, though it is the second-largest among the city's five boroughs. Today, if New York City dissolved, Brooklyn would rank as the third-most populous city in the U.S. after Los Angeles and Chicago.