City-County Territorial Competition: The Portsmouth, Virginia Case

CITY-COUNTY TERRITORIAL COMPETITION: THE PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA CASE John D. Eyre° Annexation is the principal legal means by which American municipal governments expand the territory under their jurisdiction in order to ex­ tend their political control over suburbs that have spilled beyond the city boundary and secure open space for later controlled development. In many states, the city is basically a tier of local government superimposed upon part of a county. For this reason, annexation by the city does not provoke a direct confrontation of interests with the county; for the former, annexation means an increase in size, population and tax base, but for the latter it brings no change in size or function. If conflict over annexation does occur, it is most likely to be between the expanding city and its suburbs, which commonly resort to incorporation as a defense. Virginia is the only state to continue to follow a state-wide practice of city-county separation. Under this system, a town becomes a city when it reaches 5000 population and, at that time, assumes most county functions. Attainment of 10,000 population brings the remaining political powers under its control. Liberal annexation laws then enable the city to annex adjacent parts of the county once justification is established in court. (1) While the basic operating principle of placing urban areas under urban government is reasonably sound, it does ultimately pit city against county in a struggle for territory and its attributes of population and tax base. Consequently, Virginia’s urban development during the twentieth century contains many instances of county opposition to city growth at its expense and of pro­ tracted annexation court cases marked by hostility and bitterness. Provision is also made for city-county consolidation, where the two governments merge and city boundaries replace those of the former county. Under this arrange­ ment, urban growth can proceed with minimum interruption and maximum direction. Consolidation does in one fell swoop what could only be done otherwise by a series of costly annexations over a long period of time. The growth of Portsmouth, Virginia through a number of annexations from Norfolk County, later the city of Chesapeake, is traced in this paper. The main concern is not with the legal moves leading to annexation nor the structure of local governments but geographical aspects of the city-county competition for territory. These include the basis of annexation in relation to the spread of Portsmouth urbanization across political boundaries; charac­ teristics of the areas annexed; and the impact of annexation upon the structure and growth potential of the city gaining the territory, population *Dr. Eyre ¡5 professor of geography at the university of North Carolina, Chapel H ill. The paper was accepted for publication ¡n August 1969. Vol. IX, No. 2 27 and tax base, and the county losing them. Any generalizations that may derive from the study are bound to be colored by the fact that Portsmouth is but one political unit within the larger Tidewater metropolitan area (2) of southeastern Virginia (Fig. 1). Its more recent annexations, expecially those of 1960 and1968, have been influenced by political territorial developments within the metropolitan area. GROWTH OF PORTSMOUTH TO 1960. (3 ) Portsmouth was founded as a port town in 1752 along Elizabeth River, a three-pronged (Eastern Branch, Southern Branch, and Western Branch) tidal inlet on the southern shore of Hampton Roads at the mouth of the James River. East of Elizabeth River was the already-flourishing port of Norfolk, founded in 1682. All of the area south to the North Carolina boundary and east to the Atlantic Ocean was N o r t h C a r o l i n a Figure l 28 So u t h e a st e r n G e o g r a ph er divided between Norfolk County (west) and Princess Anne County (east). Gosport Shipyard, built in 1767 along Southern Branch south of Portsmouth by a wealthy merchant, was bought by the United States government in 1801. As the main naval warfare center in Hampton Roads between 1830 and 1917, Portsmouth grew in spurts generated by cycles of national military involvement. The annexation of Norfolk County territory, which followed...