First, I just pretended that Hawaii and Alaska don't exist, it just made this a lot easier and nice looking. I took all 48 contiguous states and asked "Could you redraw the state lines to create 48 new states where each state had an equal population?" So this is a result of that. Wherever I could, I tried to make the new state lines either geographically and/or culturally relevant. Also, I tried to make the shapes as regular as possible and not all funky looking. It was hard sometimes when dealing with parts of the country that I was unfamiliar with, but I tried my best. This is obviously only one of many different possible solutions. I also didn't label the map since I felt it cramped it up too much.
I split down to the counties, and redrew the borders around different counties. I used the 2000 Census as my source, where I found county by county populations (or county equivalents according to the Census).
It was kind of hard around the big cities. NY had to be broken in a sort of weird way. One state, which I will call "New York" consists of Bronx, Kings (Brooklyn), New York (Manhattan), and Richmond (Staten Island) counties, so basically all of New York City excluding Queens. Then, for the other state which I will call "Long Island", I included Nassau, Suffolk, Queens counties (All the counties on Long Island excluding Kings) and Westchester. I don't know if this one makes geographical or cultural sense, but there was really not many other ways to do it.
Los Angeles was difficult too, particularly because LA county has a greater population than the average for my new states (9.5 Million, whereas my new states needed to average around 5.8 million). Consequently, LA county was the only county that had to be split itself. I needed to take about 3.5 million out of LA county and donate it to the neighboring new state "Ventura". I did a little quick research on different parts of the county, and finally decided that the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita Valley, the Antelope Valley and the "Westside" (as defined by the LA times), would constitute around 3.5 million, and these areas were moved into the new state of "Ventura". The rest of LA county became the new state of "Los Angeles".
The new state of "Chicago" consists of Cook and Lake counties. It doesn't really include the whole metro area, and it was split somewhat arbitrarily. The rest of the metro area were sort of divvied up between the new states of "Illinois" "Michigan", "Indiana" and "Wisconsin".
The Philadelphia metro area was also split between the new states of "Penn" and "Delaware", although most of it went to "Delaware" which included no parts of the original state of Delaware but was named after the Delaware River and Bay. The District of Columbia was included on the Virginia Side, not the Maryland Side. The state of Washington was the only one that remained unchanged. It had a population ~5.8 million in 2000, and that was also the average for the 48 contiguous states.
Average population: 5,836, 483
Standard Deviation: 239, 484
And here is the table in case anyone is interested:
| New State | Population | Largest City | |
| Alabama | 6,175,885 | Birmingham | |
| Arizona | 5,210,556 | Phoenix | |
| Bay | 5,320,818 | San Jose | |
| Chicago | 6,021,097 | Chicago | |
| Michigan | 5,791,047 | Toledo | |
| Conn | 5,904,389 | Worcester | |
| S Carolina | 6,015,507 | Charlotte | |
| Cascades | 5,960,310 | Portland | |
| Huron | 6,003,160 | Detroit | |
| Penn | 6,045,205 | Allentown | |
| Erie | 5,947,651 | Buffalo | |
| E Texas | 5,972,339 | Houston | |
| Piedmont | 5,799,216 | Atlanta | |
| Illinois | 6,005,298 | Aurora | |
| Imperial | 5,802,483 | San Diego | |
| Indiana | 5,818,156 | Indianapolis | |
| Kentucky | 6,002,588 | Louisville | |
| Los Angeles | 5,949,586 | Los Angeles | |
| Long Island | 5,906,751 | Queens | |
| Delta | 5,682,122 | New Orleans | |
| Mass | 5,831,486 | Boston | |
| Maryland | 6,026,708 | Baltimore | |
| Coral | 6,064,038 | Tampa | |
| Gold Coast | 5,952,077 | Miami | |
| Mojave | 5,458,623 | Las Vegas | |
| Minn | 5,725,839 | Minneapolis | |
| Missowa | 5,998,069 | St. Louis | |
| Hi Line | 5,798,237 | Omaha | |
| N Carolina | 6,016,261 | Virginia Beach | |
| New England | 5,807,561 | Syracuse | |
| Georgia | 5,958,274 | Jacksonville | |
| New Jersey | 5,822,286 | Newark | |
| N Texas | 5,985,492 | Dallas | |
| New York | 5,778,899 | Brooklyn | |
| Ohio | 6,054,570 | Columbus | |
| Oklansas | 5,870,816 | Oklahoma City | |
| Delaware | 5,380,732 | Philadelphia | |
| Plains | 5,318,721 | Colorado Springs | |
| Alleghany | 5,802,187 | Pittsburgh | |
| Rockies | 5,721,812 | Denver | |
| Sierra | 5,343,609 | Fresno | |
| S Texas | 5,737,919 | San Antonio | |
| Tenn | 5,889,616 | Memphis | |
| Virginia | 6,430,459 | Washington DC | |
| Ventura | 5,630,622 | San Fernando Valley | |
| Wisconsin | 6,010,727 | Milwaukee | |
| Washington | 5,894,121 | Seattle | |
| W Texas | 5,507,282 | El Paso |
No comments:
Post a Comment