Knowing where to draw the line

[Sol]

Something which I've noticed often separates really good maps from cruddy ones is knowing where and when to cut a county (or city or whatever). Some counties are more reflective of communities of interest than others, and for those which aren't or which contain a bunch of diverse communities doing a county cut seems pretty logical. This isn't to say that fair maps should cut counties willy-nilly--rather that county cuts should be thoughtful and done carefully if necessary.

Chatham County, NC is a good example of a county where slicing makes some good sense. Along 15-501 and east, Chatham is oriented towards the Triangle, with some suburban development. Meanwhile, the Western third is more rural, with a good bit of meatpacking industries in Siler City. This section looks more like Randolph County or other portions of the rural Piedmont. If you have to split Chatham, a line something like this makes a lot of sense.

Note that while this parallels some of Chatham's partisan divide, it's not a partisan division--rather the partisan divide reflects the underlying demographic differences in the county.

To underscore this point, here's a similar map of Rowan County. This slice doesn't follow an party lines, but does follow suburban vs. small town/rural fairly closely (though the red area could expand if necessary).

[lfromnj]

Does this also happen in Union County?

[Sol]

I don't know Union County as well as I know Chatham or Rowan, but I get the sense that there's a similar East-West divide between the suburban section nearer to Charlotte and Exurban/Rural areas around and east of Monroe. A few years back, there was a big kerfuffle over school redistricting because some of the suburban students would be put into more rural districts.

I do get the sense that this is a little bit more of a gradient though, since Monroe is a fairly central small town on the edge of the Charlotte area which makes the divide less clear.