Opinion ID: 353957
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: the adjacency requirement

Text: 35 Section 203(b)(8) specifies that an area must be adjacent to as well as commercially a part of a base municipality if it is to fall within that municipality's commercial zone. Arguing that the newly enlarged zones include areas which are not adjacent to one another, petitioner Short Haul Survival Committee says that the Commission has violated the express criteria of the statute. Numerous intervenors mount a similar attack on the geographic scope of the expanded commercial zones, selecting the most distant points in the zones of the nation's largest cities and arguing that these points are too remote to satisfy section 203(b)(8)'s adjacency requirement. 36 The argument ignores the meaning of adjacent: lying near, close, or contiguous (Webster II). Indeed, the inner circumference of every zone is not only adjacent to the exterior boundary of the base city, it is contiguous to it it adjoins it. This is more than adjacent requires. However, it is still arguable that a portion of the zone, near its exterior circumference, may not be adjacent to the base city. 37 The key relationship under the statute is the economic nexus between outlying points and the base municipality. Two communities which are neither geographically contiguous nor economically interdependent may nonetheless qualify for inclusion in a single commercial zone if both are adjacent to the same city. Conversely, the adjacency requirement precludes inclusion of points remote from a municipality in its commercial zone, notwithstanding the existence of intense economic interaction between them. For example, this effectively rules out a single Northeast corridor commercial zone extending from Washington, D. C., to Boston, Massachusetts. 38 As the Commission concluded in its Report, technological advances in transportation necessarily engender an element of elasticity with respect to the meaning of 'adjacent.'  Report, p. 61. 39 Transportation movements of even 15 or 20 miles beyond city limits do not contradict modern notions of local movements in large metropolitan areas. Metropolitan transportation networks of beltways and expressways often span such an area, and these distances can be covered in a matter of minutes. 40 Report, p. 84. 41 The Commission properly interpreted section 203(b)(8) as a legislative mandate to reevaluate periodically the scope of the commercial zone exemption in light of changing economic circumstances and technological advances. The newly adopted rules cannot be said to contravene the statutory requirement simply because the expanded zones include communities which are not geographically contiguous to one another.