Currently, the 9 members of the Detroit City Council are elected at-large. But what if they were elected by districts?
Here's the map I came up with Dave's Redistricting App (
http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/davesredistrictingapp.aspx ) [While DRA doesn't specifically support Detroit, you can get all the tracts in Detroit, do the estimate and go from where]
District Demographics
District 1 (Blue, next to the lake): pop. 98757, 87% Black, 8% White
District 2 (Green): pop. 98619, 87% Black, 7% White
District 3 (Purple): pop. 98651, 82% Black, 15% White
District 4 (Red): pop. 98723, 85% Black, 9% White
District 5 (Yellow): pop. 98718, 82% Black, 14% White
District 6 (Teal): pop. 98670, 95% Black
District 7 (Gray): pop. 98581, 94% Black
District 8 (Blueish, next to Dearborn): pop. 98633, 79% Black, 15% White
District 9 (Skyblue): pop. 98750, 48% Hispanic, 24% White, 23% Black
The estimate had 888012 people in Detroit, 98668 people per district. And the overall racial split was 79% Black, 11% White, 7% Hispanic
So, 4 districts have a higher white percentage than the citywide percentage. But the heavy Hispanic concentration leads to 47834 of 60535 Hispanics being in the 9th district.
More info on the neighborhoods can be found
hereAs for how the districts could effect racial composition.. the council has 8 African-Americans now, and would very likely have 8 African-Americans under a district plan. Detroit is just the kind of city where you can have 80% of people being African-American, and a map where 8 of 9 districts top 80%.
Any thoughts?