Wards are the geographic building blocks of the city’s electoral infrastructure, as every Philadelphian’s place of residence determines his or her voting location.
We are proposing a spatial analysis to visualize inequalities due to the lack of regular, systematic ward and division remapping. Although legislative districts are updated every 10 years to reflect population changes, Philadelphia wards and divisions have not been updated in over 60 years, resulting in boundaries that reflect the population in 1950, not 2017. These outdated boundaries impact polling locations, representation in special elections, and voter turnout. Due to the lack of remapping, wards range from 8,000 residents to over 45,000. Likewise, divisions range from 100 residents to over 5,000. Using existing data sets, we believe this Summer of Maps project can highlight the need for remapping of wards and divisions to better represent the citizens of Philadelphia. This project could catalyze a legal remapping effort.
The core datasets to perform this analysis are publicly available and have already been digested by Azavea for the FixPhillyDistricts project in 2011:
Additional datasets, which are publicly available on OpenDataPhilly, include:
Historical population datasets are readily available from the Census bureau.
Additional datasets from the City Commissioners may assist in analysis.
Azavea may have additional ideas for maps and statistics based on experience and we are interested in collaborating on unique visual representation of this data. The following are some initial map ideas that we would like to see:
The purpose of this Summer of Maps project is to initiate a broader conversation about the ward system and, potentially, catalyze a push for a ward remapping effort. As we have discovered, the legal process that dictates how ward maps are redrawn is accessible, reasonably low cost, and easy to explain.
To that end, the maps and analyses will be used primarily via our website, www.philadelphia3-0.org, as a point of departure for a discussion about the current maps and the reasons why they have not been updated, despite a population loss of nearly 500,000 residents. We will start with a question: What criteria are most important when drawing ward boundaries? From there, if there is an appetite for a ward remapping project, we can use the maps to connect with voters in the wards with the most out-of-date boundaries in an effort to push for a legal remapping.
The Summer 2020 session has finished. Sign up for notifications about future opportunities.
