Neutral map series

[ProgressiveModerate]

I like this project, so I'm making you a national compiled map here:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/762f726d-cc79-4357-b034-0cd11f36025d

(shaded by 2020 Pres).

Overall, I like the maps so far.

Oregon is great, I really don't have anything to complain about, and it seems to balance COIs, county splitting, compactness, and all that very well. Feels like quite a natural and logical map.

Wisconsin, I think you handled well considering it's not always a great state to work with. I personally would not pair Madison and Dodge counties in the same district, but in order to make the other districts work Doge County has to be a bit homeless, plus it obviously balances population good. I appreciate you not going out of your way to "correct" WI's geography problem for Dems; this should be about drawing good and reflecting maps nationally and overall partisanship should be pretty fair.

Maine is great cause obv no county splits, but if I were drawing the map from the perspective of purely COIs, I'd probably do a coastal-northern config that's basically a cleaned-up version of the current map.

In NH, I would've personally done a NH-01 based purely around the Boston exurbs or whatever you want to call it, having it shed it's northern portion of Belknap and Carroll Counties and instead taking in Nashua. NH-02 by default would be the rest of the state.

NC is always a hard state to deal with; it very much feels like you're playing musical chairs with communities as there isn't enough seats to truly represent each community distinctly. For me, I think district 9 feels a bit problematic, reaching all the way from Cary to the rural Sandhills. Personally, I would reconfigure 2 and 9 to be an sub/exurban Raliegh district with Cary, and then the Fayetteville+rest of Sandhills district. It may not look super attractive but it's miles better from COI. You may have to have 2 shed Goldsboro to 3 to make it work though. Charlotte is always weird cause you can either pack it into 1 district or do an awkward cut between 2 districts. I think what you did is fine

Iowa is perfect, probably isn't a better possible map.

And finally RI, I really wish there was a way to do a Providence area and non-Providence district, but I was playing around and can confirm it's prolly impossible if you don't want to split towns, so what you did is fine.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/762f726d-cc79-4357-b034-0cd11f36025d

Updated this map with everything up to Georgia btw.

I rlly like the OH, AZ, and MS maps, they balance minimizing splits (be it city or counties) with making districts that just make logical sense.

In GA though, I wouldn't use Counties as the guiding factor in the Atlanta metro area. The County lines in Atlanta are a bit arbitrary considering they were drawn hundreds of years ago and it's only rlly recently Atlanta has grown to what it is today. As a consequence, you split the city of Atlanta proper 3 ways.

I think the Cobb County nested district is fine, but the DeKalb County district while it may be attractive just doesn't fit into the larger metro very well. The rest of the GA map makes sense and is very good though.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/762f726d-cc79-4357-b034-0cd11f36025d

Updated this map with everything up to Georgia btw.

I rlly like the OH, AZ, and MS maps, they balance minimizing splits (be it city or counties) with making districts that just make logical sense.

In GA though, I wouldn't use Counties as the guiding factor in the Atlanta metro area. The County lines in Atlanta are a bit arbitrary considering they were drawn hundreds of years ago and it's only rlly recently Atlanta has grown to what it is today. As a consequence, you split the city of Atlanta proper 3 ways.

I think the Cobb County nested district is fine, but the DeKalb County district while it may be attractive just doesn't fit into the larger metro very well. The rest of the GA map makes sense and is very good though.

In case of cities crossing county lines, I treat them as distinct entities here (the same is true for disconnected parts of county and city entities). By my parameters, Atlanta is thus only split once - and in a way that is largely unavoidable (either Atlanta or Sandy Springs gets a split). Atlanta (DeKalb portion) is also not split. While counties are not necessarily perfect CoI indicators everywhere, keeping them whole is explicitly an important part of the criteria, placing equal with compactness. "Communities of interest", however they are to be defined, is secondary. Thus, compactness is the only justifiable reason to add an extra county split (as can be seen in my Missouri map, for example). With this sort of criteria, there was no way I could possibly justify splitting either Cobb or DeKalb. Note that there is no mention of communities of interest, as a term, in the OP, but county and town integrity is explicitly mentioned along as compactness.

Yeah that's fair. I did read the original post, but ig you really are doing it almost purely based on compactness/splits only using COIs as justification in extreme examples (i.e the Native tribes in AZ). I think my issue is that in rural rural areas, it's clear that you have a general regard for COIs in terms of what counties you choose to pair, so to not do that in urban areas just because counties are less granular doesn't seem right.

City lines tend to be really annoying, especially since they aren't necessarily contiguous and can cross through counties, but in most urban areas they Trump County lines in terms of cultural and socioeconomic divides. In rural areas and even with mid-sized cities, Counties almost always reign superior.

I think your AZ map is prolly the best balance when dealing with large counties.

[ProgressiveModerate]

As a NYer, the only thing I can think of for your map is to do this config for Long Island if you're really trying for compactness and minimizing County/City splits:



From a COI standpoint, they're pretty simillar.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/762f726d-cc79-4357-b034-0cd11f36025d

Updated the national map once again.

For feedback on NY, see post above. Overall I think the map works very well, and as someone very familiar with NYC you can't do much better. Ig the only potential problem would be that practically, district 9 may not be minority functioning since the district is getting whiter and also the turnout dynamics there heavily favor the liberal white community. I do think the Jewish/Russian community should be kept whole as you did.

Missouri comes together quite well. In a true COI map you'd pair Jackson County with some of Clay County, but using your rules there's nothing I can complain about with your config.

WV is obv EZ.

Nevada again falls together quite nicely by following city boundaries in Clark County. Pisses me off how Dems could've done a map like yours and achieve the same partisan affect as the current map, but instead they decide to go the naught route.

As you said, KY seems easier to keep counties whole than in practice, but the final result is nice and feels like a cleaned up version of the current map.

[ProgressiveModerate]

snip

Image is stretching the thread

How do you make it tinier?