Quote:
Originally Posted by Riverranchdrone
While cities like Houston, San Antonio and Dallas prefer to build out rather than up. Austin seems to not be expanding out as much as it is up.
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Fun Fact: Dallas is for all intents and purposes a landlocked municipality, and has been for quite some time now.
Austin, until state law changed, was just as annexationist as Houston, San Antonio, and Fort Worth.
Actually, Austin may be arguably
more annexationist than the other three, as the city has used its annexation powers to take control of land for the purpose of protecting it from suburban development.
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I would agree with those above that we, in America, often balkanize our jurisdictions more than is necessary. Having a single community under the same jurisdiction usually leads to operational efficiency for services provided by that layer of government. It also does not necessary follow from taking issue with an excess number of municipalities that one is agreeable with the large area that comes along with municipal consolidation. I, for one, both believe that many municipalities should be consolidated by their states into singular governments AND that we should have stronger land-use regulations that keep urban development within strict confines and minimizes new suburban, exurban, and periurban development so that we don’t keep sprawling into oblivion.