Using urban county clusters in MI

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Here's another potential Michigan, using my usual +-1K population tolerance, and splitting no municipalities except for Detroit:



Notable features: the UP/North (1) and Lansing ( districts are whole-county; 2 and 3 together take in the whole of the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland CSA and look damn good doing so, the Saginaw-Bay City CSA is made whole; both black-majority districts are at least 54% AA by total pop and 52.5% by VAP.

Flint with the Thumb rather than Saginaw may seem weird to some... but Flint is in the Detroit CSA along with Lapeer and St. Clair Counties, so it actually makes better sense than the status quo w/r/t metro contiguity.  The only actually dodgy part of this map is that both VRA districts leave Wayne County... but 13 obviously has to, to get Southfield/Oak Park, and 12 is justified since there's a higher percentage of blacks in Eastpointe than Dearborn or other points south.

Your red CD (my MI-04) is too erose for me. The magenta CD has a traveling chop of Oakland going to Macomb, which is illegal. The magenta CD also looks too erose to me.  Did you minimize the county chops? Pretty map though. Would you please persuade Muon2 to draw his maps that way? 

If your powers of persuasion are insufficient, I doubt anyone's will be effective.