Talk:Municipal annexation in the United States

What's going to be the standard for including cities here?
It seems to me that just about every US city has annexed some territory since they were first chartered. Jon 22:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Only a partial answer, but I'd suppose some research into some of the more unusual cases in the US - the massive historical expansion of Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix and Chicago; or the fairly well-studied process institutionalized for cities in North Carolina (David Rusk's Cities Without Borders gives the NC cities a detailed look, and Mike Davis' City Of Quartz does the same for L.A.). Offhand, those spring to mind for various reasons - the empire-building aspects of L.A. and Chicago's historic annexations, and the very unusual annexation legal philosophy in NC... Davidals 06:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There's a difference between annexing unincorporated territory and consuming other political entities. --Belg4mit 04:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Dillon
Umm, what the heck is the point of the introduction? --Belg4mit 04:23, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the point of the rest of the article, either. --Beirne (talk) 05:27, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Annexation vs. consolidation?
See histories of Jacksonville, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee, Miami, Florida, Melbourne, Florida, Honolulu, Hawaii, Houston, Texas, Juneau, Alaska, and Lexington, Kentucky. 147.70.242.54 (talk) 20:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This Article Has Major Issues
If this article is about "municipal annexation," then it seriously needs to begin by focusing on just what "municipal annexation is"...that is, the process by which a city legally incorporates areas into it. There needs to be a discussion about "growth" and "services."

It is clear that the "shoestring annexation" merger didn't go well. We have a lot of examples of unusual annexation, but little or no discussion of regular annexation. The second section is fine, but where's the first section? Ryoung 122 16:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

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The town of Summerville South Carolina Colonial
Can the city change its boundaries being Colonial? 2600:1004:B03E:24D6:4C13:3420:126A:2390 (talk) 21:53, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Lead sentence: can cities annex only unincorporated land (what I changed it to say) or can they annex part or all of other municipalities?
I just edited the leading sentence, which was IMHO written poorly. It previously said "Municipal annexation is a process by which a municipality expands its boundaries into adjacent unincorporated areas that have not been incorporated or annexed into the municipality." I changed it to "Municipal annexation is a process by which a municipality expands its boundaries into adjacent unincorporated areas." Because duh, a city does not expand into what it has already expanded into.

I believe, but am not 100 percent sure because laws can differ across jurisdictions in crazy ways, that a municipality can usually/always only annex unincorporated land. And that they are stymied in their expansion if persons out in unincorporated land manage to incorporate, i.e. form a municipality, first. I know something like that happened in New York State at least once... to stymie expansion of some village, i seem to recall, the non-village-people incorporated all other land in a county or town as a village, presumably with a donut hole in the middle.

If in fact a city, in any U.S. state or elsewhere, can ever annex part or all of an incorporated town or village, then the new leading sentence is wrong. Also it does surely include a small misstatement anyhow (as did the previous version), in suggesting that annexation can only happen for directly adjacent land. Because sometimes cities and towns annex separated parcels of land, i.e. forming i guess exclaves. A city may want to gain ownership or other control of some property miles away where a water reservoir may be built, for example, and annexing it as well as owning it may be important. Cities can come into ownership of property when someone dies and has left property for a park to the city, too, although annexing may not be needed. But a lead sentence doesn't have to include all possible complexity, the complications can be added later.

Anyhow, I hope this new lead sentence is not wrong. --Doncram (talk) 23:57, 18 October 2022 (UTC)