Sunday, January 13, 2013

A Berkeley Student District? The Challenge





Berkeley has 8 City Council districts.
The orange rectangle is the area around campus where most students live.  25% of the city's population lives here.
None of the current council members lives there.  
Each council district must have 1 council member's current residence in it, no more, no less.
Each district must have around 14,000 people (28 dots) in it, no more, no less.

The Challenge: How to avoid splitting up the residents in the orange rectangle?

Friday, January 11, 2013

Back for 2013

As you may have heard, the process is restarting again!  This time, there's no need to adhere to the 1986 lines.  However, council members cannot be drawn out of their districts.  Therefore, is there really that much new flexibility?  I'll try a couple ideas out but my first instinct is no, and that creating a student supermajority district will still be a challenge as none of the 8 council members lives within 6 blocks of campus.  Read more on Berkeleyside.