Jacksonville[, Florida]'s population is slightly larger than FTW's, but FTW's growth rate is faster. The issue with Jacksonville though its city limits are twice the size of Fort Worth's, which makes the comparison goofy on the face of it and is why comparing metro areas is far more informative. I don't know much about Jacksonville so for all I know a bunch of that growth is due mostly to annexation. (Edit: looks like the Jacksonville MSA has a strong growth rate so it's not just annexation)
But FTW/ATX having roughly the same land areas is partly why I find that particular comparison interesting."
-- IcedCowboyCoffee
https://www.mtas.tennessee.edu/system/f ... 202021.pdf
Jacksonville is an example of city-county consolidation. Sometimes their operations merge without a complete overlap of their territories -- for instance Boston and Nashville merged with their counties but they have other cities that still exist within the boundaries of the same county. Other times the overlap is 100%. This document is a very good overview and timeline.
Counties in Texas, as in many states, are subdivided by population into four precincts (each with a commissioner) plus a county judge, for a panel of five executive votes.
Home rule cities in Texas do not have the ability to merge their operations or territories with other cities nor with a county level government. I am not sure how one city can be absorbed *by* a surviving city in order to merge the two, but it is possible. There may be a more direct city council route than the following: voters vote on a general referendum to dissolve their municipality and vote to be annexed by a neighbor on the same day that the voters of that other city vote to annex them.
But there would not, under the current state constitution, be a way for a county to annex all the city governments and create a unified metro system.