This map of the United States is a thought experiment designed by artist and urban planner Neil Freeman. He lives in New York City and runs a website of his work called Fake is the New Real where he has his artwork and thoughts posted. Much of his work deals with urbanism and mapping. One interesting piece, for instance, compares the variation of urban pattern between Chicago and New York. He overlaid all the streets of Chicago and New York in separate images centered on a single point revealing a dramatic graphic form distinct for each city.
View image
The map posted here caught my eye. It has a geographical, political, and demographic message. It reapportions the 50 states into areas encompassing roughly equal populations of 6 million each. The land areas of states differ dramatically based on the density of populations across the country. He gives the states new names and divvies up new electoral college vote quantities that are equal for each state. He describes it as a map for electoral college reform. In a way this map is more about the Senate however. Currently each state gets two Senators, no matter how small or how big their population is. So for instance, California with the biggest economy and the biggest population (currently closing in on 40 million people) gets just 2 US Senators - the same number as little itty bitty Alaska with a population smaller than Erie County. Of course being in New York State along with gigantic New York City, poor little Buffalo and Erie County basically get no real Senatorial representation.
So in the map Buffalo gets its own state of 6 million with its own 2 Senators, where it is the largest city. Buffalo's state would be called Adirondack and would encompass much of Upstate NY and most of New England. Many of the names Freeman gave the new 50 states are interesting but lost on me. Chicago is in the state of Gary which is obviously a bit of snark aimed at that city. California is divided roughly into 4 states giving it 8 Senators to its current 2. Maybe that would break the conservative filibuster strangle hold in congress. This will never happen of course but it is fun to think about.
^Click on map to enlarge
Nice to see an update on a proposal that has gently graced the idea books for the past 200+ years. Of course the idea is absurd, but it is nothing new at all. Various visions of state apportionment based on population have been put forth since shortly after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Most have been a cartographic fantasy to illustrate the disparity in congressional representation, just like this one.
(Remember that the only reason our capital was built upon the swamps of the Potomac was because of consideration to the southern states who were very far removed from the overwhelming population density of Philadelphia and Boston. Today, such a compromise would place our nation's capital in Missouri.
The last similar map that I recall seeing bundled all of Florida and portions of the Gulf Coast into a state called Tropicana. The vast majority of the West Coast was called Pacifica, and Texas had annexed several adjacent states to reclaim the name Tejas. On that same map, NY PA OH and even IL were subdivided into a jumble of districts that would confound even today's most anti-gerrymandering legislator.
The state of Gary is not a slap at Chicago. Just as Buffalo won the terminus to the Erie Canal and quickly annexed the much larger town of Black Rock... Gary was the prime seaport of Lake Michigan until the railroads began to favor a terminus at Chicago. Toledo was part of Michigan until Ohio fought a war to annex it (and the rivalry repeats itself every football season).
Even my parents remember when the miniscule cathedral in Atlanta, which now oversees the Catholic Church for the entire southeast, was simply a wilderness outpost for the greater Archdiocese of Savanna in the 1930s. Savanna's minor cathedral is vast after its expansion 150 years ago. Atlanta still squeezes its archbishop and two auxiliary bishops into a space approximately a third the size of Buffalo's tiny Old St Joseph cathedral. The minority Catholic population 50 years later is nearly the same as all of WNY's multidenominational census. Mass starts at noon... old ladies are fighting for seats at 10:15
Our nation's population changes daily. Even the census every 10 years cannot accurately give equal representation per voter.
We could draw a map that includes Buffalo as part of Canada, rather than see a civil war between us and Boston.