ABSTRACT

One prominent explanation for municipal incorporation – i.e., the formation of new cities – is that it is a defensive response to the threat of annexation posed by neighboring cities. In this paper, we conduct cross-sectional regression analyses to examine the relationship between race, municipal annexation, and municipal incorporation between 2000 and 2010. Our results suggest that annexation by neighboring cities plays a key role in driving municipal incorporation activity in the U.S.; cities that are next to unincorporated majority-white communities tend to annex more aggressively than those next to majority-minority communities, likely as a result of racially selective annexation efforts; majority-white communities are more likely to incorporate in response to the encroachment via annexation of the nearest city; and communities that have higher shares of non-Hispanic whites than the annexing city are especially likely to use incorporation as a defensive strategy to prevent annexation.

摘要

对市政合并——即新城市的形成——的一个突出解释是，它是对邻近城市所构成的吞并威胁的防御性反应。在本文中，我们进行了横截面回归分析，以检验 2000 年至 2010 年间种族、市政吞并和市政合并之间的关系。我们的结果表明，邻近城市的吞并在推动美国市政合并活动中发挥着关键作用。与多数少数族裔社区相邻的城市相比，与多数少数族裔社区相邻的城市往往更积极地吞并，这可能是种族选择性吞并努力的结果；多数白人社区更有可能通过吞并最近的城市来应对入侵；