Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama. The population was 76,143 at the 2020 census. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. The Auburn-Opelika, AL MSA with a 2020 population of 193,773, along with the Columbus, GA-AL MSA and Tuskegee, Alabama, comprises the greater Columbus-Auburn-Opelika, GA-AL CSA, a region home to 563,967 residents as of 2020. Auburn is a historic college town and is the home of Auburn University. It is Alabama's fastest-growing metropolitan area and the 19th-fastest-growing metro area in the United States as measured since 1990. U.S. News ranked Auburn among its top ten list of best places to live in the United States for the year 2009. The city's unofficial nickname is "The Loveliest Village on the Plains," taken from a line in the poem The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith: "Sweet Auburn! Loveliest village of the plain..."