The California parliament project

[platypeanArchcow]

Hey all,

I've been using Dave's Redistricting App to create California districts of about 100,000 people each.  That would make a total of 339 districts ultimately.  I've only really worked on areas of California that I know decently well or that are easy for other reasons, and I don't plan to spend all that much effort on this.

The idea is to have districts that, as much as possible, reflect communities.  No gerrymandering or anything like that.  So far almost all the districts have been less than 1000 people off and all have been less than 1300 off.  I'd love it if people helped, submitted alternative maps and such.  I know that a number of people here know way more than I do about California political geography in general, and some of you know stuff about the East Bay, Central Valley, Orange and San Diego counties, perhaps even the San Fernando Valley, Inland Empire, and Gateway Cities, which I don't.  Well, maybe I know something about the East Bay, but not enough to feel excited about partitioning it.

I'm going to follow up with several posts displaying my maps and detailing decisions.  Let's start with Silicon Valley.

So, I started out with a very nice district consisting of Palo Alto, Portola Valley, and Los Altos Hills, and worked from there.  Of course, this was a bad place to start, and I realized later there were two things wrong: first, San Benito County, with only 50,000 people and not really combining well with anything besides Gilroy, was left dangling; and there was an unfortunate monstrosity stretching from southern Pacifica to northern Santa Cruz.  Neither of these could really be fixed without reconfiguring that area.  Since I insisted on keeping Palo Alto together, I produced the teal monstrosity which combines all the rich foothill people.  I apologize for that.

I'm fairly proud of the Mt. View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa Clara, Milpitas/SR-237 triangle, and West San Jose districts.  East of that, I didn't really know what I was doing, so if someone knows the neighborhoods of San Jose they should make a different map.

Next, San Francisco and San Mateo County:

I'm not an expert on San Francisco, and I was kind of lazy about figuring out what's going on there, so again I would appreciate a reconfiguring.  Other than that, not much to say about this, really.  I tingle to think how liberal the light pink district would be.

Gilroy and Santa Cruz to Monterey:

After the coastal San Mateo district got straightened out, the situation further south improved too.  I like the compact Monterey Peninsula district.  Light teal and dark red continue on to SLO County.

San Luis Obispo:

The SR-1 and US-101 districts continue.  There's also a district containing San Luis Obispo proper.

Santa Barbara and Ventura:

What do people think of the split between inner Santa Barbara on the one hand, and Goleta and Carpinteria on the other?  This is also the first time you really see the ridiculousness of using block groups.  Their graph-theoretic dual would make way more sense.

Southern Ventura County:


I made two versions, and I don't really like either of them.  Then again, I don't really know the area, I was going entirely by the physical and road geography.  Also, more stupid block groups.

Parts of Los Angeles County:

Note how the selected district is 53% Asian.  The two next to it are Asian plurality, but unfortunately only 49% and 44%.  LOL.  Some of this map is bullshit, as in I didn't really know what I was doing, but I'm pretty happy with the Asian, Hollywood, Pasadena, Monterey Hills/Highland Park, Silver Lake/Echo Park, and Santa Monica/Venice districts.

The North Bay:

Mauve stretches to the north end of Sonoma County; dark gray envelops Lake County.  The problem with Lake County is that it doesn't really fit politically with anything else.  It's not particularly hippie like Mendocino, nor particularly agricultural like the stuff to the east, nor even in the way that Napa is, as far as I can tell.  I don't really like the Napa County solution, meaning the way I was forced to combine Napa with bits of Vallejo, but I couldn't think of anything better.

The far north:

Purple takes in all of Mendocino, as you can also see on this (partial) overview map:


Though since I made it I've done more.  Here's the far northeast:

and the mountain region:

which is not a particularly well-informed map, it's sort of haphazard.

Finally the desert region:

The sand-colored thing isn't really a district, it's just sort of there.  Here's an inset map:

I think there's some sense to these districts.  The neon green one is a US-395 district, so it makes sense despite a slightly odd shape.  The rest starts from the Imperial Valley and Twentynine Palms and fills in, which is why it's sort of offset.  Maybe there's a better way to do this stuff, I don't know.

Anyway, fire away.  I hope to see lots of maps in this thread!

Also, you should probably track me down and shoot me if I spend much more time on this, ever.  Especially since I have to go to the library to access a computer which runs the app properly.