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What are some examples of cities that have steadily diminished in size, in terms of land area?
I'm looking for a city whose boundaries have changed multiple times, each time having a smaller land area than the last, until there is a very noticeable decrease in size from its original borders.
Again, this is not referring to population decline; it is in terms of land area.
I don't know if there are any that have lost land size, but many have grown in land size through annexation or by essentially being coming the same as the county they are in.
You have quite a few cities, especially in the Northeast where they have been the same for around/over a century.
Good question. The only confirmed example I can find in the US of a city's borders shrinking is Calabash, NC --- in 1998, a section of the town split off as Carolina Shores, as a result of disagreements over "sewer, garbage collection and sign restrictions".
I was looking at Wikipedia's population chart for Vancouver, WA yesterday and I noticed that the city lost 22.1% of its population between 1950 and 1960. That's especially weird because it's always been a fast-growing area, and the '50s were booming in most suburban areas. It seems likely that part of the city was split off as unincorporated areas, but I can't find any confirmation of that.
In the early days it happened to a lot of places. Original towns in New England like Vharkestiwn included modern Somerville, Malden and Medford. This happened as new parishes piped up with the rising colonial populations.
Lowell split from Chelmsford, Derry and Londonderry NH split from the original Londonderry.
Dorchester, MA was a city that was quite massive at one point. Now its a neighborhood of Boston.
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