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UPDATE: March 6, 2012
We've added Congressional districts as proposed by District Court Judge Hon. Roanne Mann to our interactive redistricting site. Here’s a link that compares District 9 (Rep. Turner, in NYC) with one of the proposed districts that it would become under her proposed lines: http://t.co/01K4hMu8
We also submitted a letter today to the court [PDF] suggesting that they can use our maps to visually compare the different proposed lines. Hopefully they’ll put our online maps to good use as they review the different Congressional district proposals.
UPDATE: March 5, 2012
We've made two updates the information below.
- We've added the Congressional district data in shapefile and KMZ formats based on Common Cause's submission to the court. We think this will be especially helpful since the court has asked the intervenors to compare their maps with Common Cause's proposal.
- Now you can visualize the proposed districts based on the mapped data below at the Center for Urban Research's interactive redistricting site.
- compare with existing Congressional districts;
- easily switch among the Congressional proposals from Common Cause and the Senate & Assembly majorities; and
- view the proposed districts in relation to block-level demographic maps (do any of them appear to "pack," "crack," or dilute the potential voting power of minority populations?) or local voting patterns (click the "More Data" tab at the bottom right).
Here are some examples:
- District 9 (Rep. Turner), as proposed by the Senate majority, the Assembly majority , and Common Cause
- District 22 (Rep. Hinchey): Senate proposal , Assembly proposal, and Common Cause
- District 5 (Rep. Ackerman): Senate proposal , Assembly plan, and Common Cause
Today the New York World posted an analysis of how these different Congressional district proposals might impact Rep. Charles Rangel's current district 15.
The Nyack News and Views site also highlighted links to our interactive Congressional district maps here.
Original post
Proposed congressional district boundaries have been submitted to the US District Court for consideration by a special master who will redraw the lines by March 12. The proposals were made yesterday on behalf of the NYS Senate and Assembly majority parties as well as intervenors in the proceedings, and are available here.
The maps were submitted in PDF format, and each party also provided "block assignment lists" to delineate the proposed districts. The block lists indicate which Census blocks (the smallest level of Census geography) correspond to which district. But the maps are not publicly available in a format that you can easily use with mapping software or online maps.
In order to enable others to visualize and analyze these districts on maps, the Center for Urban Research (CUR) at the CUNY Graduate Center has converted these lists into two formats compatible with desktop and online mapping applications: "shapefiles" and KML files. (Shapefiles are commonly used by most desktop geographic information system, or GIS, software packages. KML files are used typically in Google Maps, Google Earth, and other online mapping applications.)
- CONGRESSIONAL districts (proposed by the Senate majority) in shapefile [zip] format and KML (KMZ format);
- CONGRESSIONAL districts (proposed by the Assembly majority) in shapefile [zip] format and KML (KMZ format).
- CONGRESSIONAL districts (proposed by Common Cause) in shapefile [zip] format and KML (KMZ format).
Earlier proposed maps of State Senate and Assembly districts are available for downloading here, and at interactive maps by:
