Annexation

Annexation is a procedure that enables a city to grow by expanding its boundaries to include neighboring territory. It is closely related to the idea of consolidation, a process that enables two or more cities to merge into one larger government. Virtually every major American city has grown either through annexation or consolidation.

Annexation has had a long history in the United States. In the nineteenth century, annexation and consolidation produced America's largest cities. New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia— along with many others—grew enormously. New York City expanded from approximately 44 to 300 square miles, and Chicago from 10 to 185 square miles. Boston grew to almost 30 times its original size. Philadelphia increased even more dramatically: from 2 to 130 square miles. Although suburbanization greatly enlarged the geographic reach of their metropolitan regions, annexation in major Eastern and Midwestern cities ended in the nineteenth century. But annexation continues elsewhere in the United States. Between 1950 and 1990, David Rusk reports, more than 80 percent of the nation's central cities grew by 10 percent or more. Important examples include Houston, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Phoenix, and San Jose. And there are many others. The major cities of the twentieth century in the South and West, like the major Eastern and Midwestern cities of the nineteenth century, have thus grown by annexation.

There are two ways to understand why some cities in the United States continue to annex adjacent territory and others do not. One is that the arguments for and against annexation have a different impact in different parts of the country. The other is that the legal structure that empowers cities to annex neighboring territory differs from place to place.

Consider first the arguments for and against annexation. Many annexations have been fueled by the idea that size matters. Civic pride and boos-terism have fostered expansion as cities have competed with each other to be one of America's largest cities. Often, this expansion has been supported by the business community. Land speculation and the desire to create an efficient geographic area for the delivery of city services have played a [Page 29]role as well. But the notion that size matters has also been embraced by opponents of annexation. Many residents of small communities like their connection to small city governments. Land speculators sometimes prefer working with smaller governments, and those interested in city services can also find advantages in them.

These traditional pro and con arguments now take place in the context of large-scale suburban sprawl. Opponents of suburban sprawl, and of the political fragmentation that generates it, frequently favor making annexation easy. Supporters of metropolitan fragmentation—or, as they are more likely to put it, people who favor offering potential residents a wide choice of communities to live in—oppose it. Current annexation debates also take place in metropolitan areas that are characterized by wide disparities between neighboring jurisdictions in terms of income, race, and ethnicity. The greater these disparities, the more likely it is that annexation will be fiercely contested.

The way in which these arguments for and against annexation are resolved is significantly affected by the different legal structures for annexation established by state law. Some states (such as Texas) have adopted rules that foster annexation and others (such as Massachusetts) have adopted rules that inhibit it. Many people assume that a territory cannot be annexed over the objection of its residents. But that is only one of the possible legal structures for annexation decisions. The state legislature can enlarge a city's territory on its own without a vote either of the expanding city or of the territory to be annexed. The state legislature can also authorize local elections. Yet these elections can be organized in different ways. Residents of both the annexing city and the annexed territory can be entitled to vote on the annexation proposal, but their votes can be counted either together, in one ballot box, or separately, with a majority required in each of the two jurisdictions. The dual ballot box option empowers the territory sought to be annexed to veto the annexation, whereas the single ballot box option (assuming that the annexing city has a larger population) makes annexation easier to accomplish. Some states organize annexation by empowering only the residents of the annexing city or its city council to approve annexation. Under this scheme, no vote at all takes place in the annexed territory. Other states do the opposite: They enable the residents of the annexed territory to vote but deny the vote to residents of the annexing city. Like the choice between a single and dual ballot box, these alternative structures can foster or inhibit annexation.

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