I feel like I’m missing something obvious, but I haven’t made progress on my own. Why does one of these use 隣の町, and the other 隣町?
Is there some reason 隣の町 is inappropriate in the second example? Or the other way around? Is there something significant going on with adjective vs noun here I don’t understand yet, or is it just choice of words?
Perfectly happy to accept reading material as an answer 
Oi!
Don’t call yourself stupid for asking a question! D:< Especially after you already tried to work on it on your own first.
I’m too tired to actually ponder the question, but… Just sayin’. 
Miss you Alan Rickman 
Preemptively calling myself stupid because it is going to be something simple like “There is no reason. It just sounds natural, and you have to figure out when to use one or the other through exposure alone.”
Also,
Even when the answer is simple, you have still learned something! Furthermore, people with a less advanced knowledge of Japanese learn indirectly form this post as well. 
Also I have no clue
Changed the title. I’m still stupid for other reasons, though. I promise 
What is telling you that one or the other is inappropriate?
Nothing other than I have not found examples proving they are interchangeable.
Ah. Then my answer is that you’re overthinking.
Just because you see something said one way, doesn’t mean it is the only way to say it.
Definitely not an expert here, so take my words with a spoon of salt, but intuitively I think you could literally translate the effect to English, where there is no difference in meaning.
I think it is basically the same as the Orange Juice and the Juice of Orange, where the meaning is the same, but the tone is maybe a little different.
But almost no one would ever say Juice of Orange, unless they were jokingly acting like it was a fancy drink or something. So that would be a pretty sizeable difference.
That’s what I meant with a difference in tone. Of course the comparison doesn’t 100%, but in Japanese it is not completely ridiculous to 隣の町. Maybe a fancy person would say 隣町, while your loose and cool friend with sunglasses might say 隣の町.
To me this is however complete conjecture and I have no idea if this is correct.
I asked my girlfriend, and she said that if there’s a difference in usage or nuance, it’s not large enough that she’s consciously aware of it.
That was my initial thought as well, since both words are kunyomi. So it’s not like 隣の人 and 隣人, which sound quite different in register despite being essentially equivalent in meaning (with regard to a neighbor).
Thanks 
You are b-baka-elcome
隣町 perhaps feels a little more 丁寧 than 隣の町, but there is no real difference. Especially in written language you see omission.
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