I was wondering if a city has ever decided to lose a chunk of itself (not disincorporation of the entire city). For example, perhaps a city has decided it no longer wants the part of town “on the wrong side of the tracks.”
In Ohio it’s called detachment. It doesn’t happen much, but it’s possible. It’s usually by petition of a landowner for tax reasons. (I think the most common use is to detach agricultural property that was annexed in contemplation of development that never happened.)
ETA: Re-reading your question, though, I’m not sure if it’s possible for a municipality to initiate the process.
Many Quebec municipalities were merged by a provincial law in 2002. Municipalities are considered creations of the provincial government, and can have their territory changed at will by the province. Then, in 2003, a new government was elected and decided to hold referenda in the merged cities asking whether they wanted their old municipality to “unmerge”. Some of them voted yes. This said, it was done over the heads of the municipal governments.
I think unmergers have happened a few other times in the past. For example, the municipality of Cantley was merged into the city of Gatineau in the late 1970s, then recreated during the 1980. Gatineau had its territory increased during the 2002 mergers, but this time Cantley remained separate.
Staten Island tried.
Arlington, VA (technically a county, but it functions as a city) has done it twice in a single century. It was retroceded to Virginia after thirty-odd years of being part of the District of Columbia, and then separated itself from Alexandria, VA (Both were part of “Alexandria County” before and just after retrocession). Alexandria has annexed surrounding neighborhoods, both from Arlington (in the 1940s) and Fairfax County (in the 1970s); I guess you could say that the Del Ray and Mt. Vernon neighborhoods have endured un-annexation three times, once from DC, once from Alexandria and once from Arlington.
I’m not even factoring in the late 18th Century, since it was mostly undeveloped then.
As has the San Fernando Valley from LA
Freetown Christiana in Copenhagen is de-facto independent, with legalised marijuana and so on, though there have been moves to reincorporate it in recent years.
from Wikipedia:
A closely related thread from about a year ago: Have any parts of cities seceded to form their own city? However, that thread deals with situations where part of a city wants to break away from the rest, rather than the rest of the city kicking out the other part.
Independent cities are, I believe, different from what the OP is describing. And they’re not very uncommon. All cities in Virginia, for example, are independent cities.
Oh, yes. Probably happens a couple dozen times a year across the US. As noted, generally it’s de-annexing an area where expected development never happened, or where it’s desired by a particular landowner with special circumstances. Other instances occur in tradeoffs between adjacent municipalities, by court order if the annexation was improper, or to correct clerical error.
I have never heard of a city “throwing out” a large group of residents because they’re poor or demand services, but there are lots of instances where they’ve rather pointedly never been taken in. LA’s East Side is the most prominent example.
They are very uncommon outside Virginia, if by the term you mean “city held in a distinct status by the state from county governments, within the area of none of which it lies” as opposed to “city which has absorbed the land and functions of the entire county,” of which there are a large number of examples.
Only Baltimore and St. Louis Cities are “independent cities” distinct from counties at the state level (plus every single city in ?Virginia, of course). I am not clear on whether Carson City NV is a third example or a coterminous city-county, and I’m nearly certain that Denver CO is, like Jacksonville, Miami-Dade, Nashville, Indianapolis, San Francisco and probably a number of others, a coterminous city-county hybrid.
I’m sure Illinois would like to lose chicago. in 1992 there was an advisory vote put on the ballot to divide california 3 ways…it won in 27 of the 31 counties that voted on it. Let majority win for once.
Are we negotiating the space between “not uncommon” and “very uncommon”?
The point is that this is not what the OP is asking about.
So are there any real examples of what the OP asks, which to me requires a muncipality itself initiating a process to redraw its boundaries to omit an area which was once incorporated into it?
This would Not include:
An area of a city attempting to secede from the municipality (e.g. San Fernado Valley from LA) - this would also include the Quebec ‘de-merging’ mentioned before.
A developer or landowner asking to redraw the borders of a municipality (this seems like just a case of secession, although I guess it meets the OP if the municipality agrees, perhaps if a deal is struck benefically to both parties)
A city incorporating as it’s own county (like St. Louis and Indianapolis did)
I’m wondering if a municipality donating/ceding it’s control over an area that becomes part of a State or Federal national park/monument would count? And are there examples of that?
I would add that New York City is one city which contains five counties!
I only know this because it happened to a neighborhood where I used to live but about 35 years ago, the extreme western section of the city of San Jose voted to detach itself and join the neighboring city of Cupertino. This was a rather unique case, however, due to the odd octopus-like layout of the San Jose city limits.
Yes, it has happened in New York City (sort of).
But first let me address some failed attempts to split pieces away from NYC. The 5-borough city we are familiar with today was created in 1898 with the consolidation of the various cities, towns and villages around New York Harbor. Soon after this consolidation, outlying districts began talking de-annexation because they felt they were being neglected. The earliest movement I’ve found began with the Rockaways (I think in the early 19-teens). Brooklyn tried to leave (halfheartedly) in the 1940s – and on-and-off ever since! Staten Island famously tried to de-annex in the 1990s.
The only time it has ever happen for real was in 1899. The consolidation of 1898 created an eastern border – that is, the eastern boundary of the Borough of Queens – that extended further than it does today. When the NYS legislature created Nassau County in 1899, they redrew that boundary and “took away” about 12 square miles from NYC.
There are a couple of things about this move worth mentioning. First, the state legislature did it, not NYC itself. Second, while the residents of the affected area may have supported the idea of joining with Nassau Co. there was, to my knowledge, no great movement to split off. The area was lightly populated and undeveloped. In all likelihhod, the redrawing of the line was merely meant to serve the needs of the newly created greater county and to establish a more practical border – the original boundary was a largely arbitrary straight line drawn from point A to point B.
It’s a legal fiction. The county seat of Fairfax County is City of Fairfax; the county seat of Albemarle County is Charlottesville. I think they just want to restrict city dollars from paying county employees.
First, again I don’t think this meets the criteria of the OP - those ‘de-annexing’ attempts you mentioned were plain and simple secession movements, nothing else (during the late 1980s/early 1990s when Staten Island secession was in the news around here, it was always called Secession or the Secession Movement (or the PR term, forming the ‘City of Staten Island’ - BTW, the vote in 1993 did pass, but it was illegal under state law in the first place as it dd not allow the rest of NY City residents to vote on ‘de-annexing’ Staten Island - that vote, if it had occured and past, **would **have matched what I think the OP is looking for). So, as usual in New York, we got to waste millions of dollars in studies due to buffoon politicians with silly agendas…
Now, as to Nassau County, sorry Stuyguy but your information is very wrong -
New York City never controlled what would become Nassau County (except for a few parcels traded back and forth when setting the boundaries in 1898) - however, since I am simply an anonymous guy on the internet, let’s let these guys give the story: