Municipal annexation

Municipal annexation is the legal process by which a city or other municipality acquires land as its jurisdictional territory (as opposed to simply owning the land the way individuals do).^[1] The annexed land is typically not part of any other municipality. In the United States and Canada, however, annexation may also involve one polity absorbing another, usually an adjacent and smaller one, and usually by vote of the residents of both polities. For example, in 1872, the city Zanesville, Ohio annexed the adjacent community of Putnam,^[2] and in 1889, the city of Toronto annexed the adjacent town of Parkdale.