I've got a very crude Voronoi map of the US -- Left-Wing Discussion

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Date Posted: Sat 2003-09-20 11:20:59
Author: arendt
Subject: I've got a very crude Voronoi map of the US

Hello, Redeye-

Its been very slow work on my government stuff.

One thing I have managed to do, mostly by hand, is to generate
my Voronoi-diagram city-states for geographically-sensible political
territories.

Unfortunately, I did this almost completely by hand (except for
the final JPEG file, which I will try to send to you. Not sure how
to post an image in your page at VOY; it would help
to have a direct email.)

Let me tell you the process.

1. Hand-traced the borders of CONUS on a piece of paper.
2. Hand-placed the 41 major metropolitan areas(M.A.s).
3. Hand-placed 7 minor M.A.s in the plains/west, even tho very low population.
4. Hand-placed the peak-lines of the Rockies, Appalachins, Sierras, and Cascades (dashed lines).

This is where the hi-tech, lo-tech interface got really stupid

5. Placed map from above over computer monitor and entered major city
points into on-line Voronoi Diagram applet.
6. Hand traced the returned VD onto the map, still on the computer screen,
adjusting the diagram for the mountain peak lines.

7. Hand-placed the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers (the only non-straight
lines on the map, except for the CONUS outline).

----

Now that this first, very crude tesselation is done, I can already see some good news,
and some bad news.

Good News:

1. Centering the VD on the cities gives states that capture most, if not all, of the
population of a given M.A.
2. Rivers, by and large, are in the center of states, as I wanted.
3. Existing states are sensibly split up. E.g., South Florida, Gulf Coast Florida,
Atlantic Coast Florida.
4. Geographical regions are not violated so much. E.g., no state line crosses the
Appalachin or Rockies peak line. The Great Basin is distinguished - it is the
three city-states Boise + Las Vegas + Salt-Lake City.

Bad News:

1. These new states don't have the same visual impact as the current ones. They
all sort of look the same - a bunch of funny-looking, hard-to-distinguish polygons.

2. Now I have to think about which legislatures meet in which cities.

3. Since I included smaller cities in the more remote regions (Spokane, Boise, Las
Vegas, Rapid City, Albuquerque, Omaha, Oklahoma City), I have to decide
if they have enough population to run a geographical state legislature. Its obviously
OK for the bigger of these towns, but for Spokane, boise, and Rapid City, I will
have to check regional populations.

-------------

Future work:

I have discovered some good GIS Freeware. It is called GRASS.

http://opensourcegis.org/
http://grass.itc.it/faq/

The problem is that the download is pretty big. (You can buy a CD distribution for
$40, but I'm cheap.) I have to go to my lab, where I have a high speed pipe.

Can you post the JPEG file for me on your VOY site?

thanks,

arendt

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Replies:

Good to hear that... -- Redeye, Sat 2003-09-20 13:43:21
- Re: Good to hear that... -- arendt, Sat 2003-09-20 13:56:59
  - Re: Good to hear that... -- goobergunch, Sat 2003-09-20 16:01:46
    - All I see is a red x :-( -- Redeye, Sat 2003-09-20 21:13:24
      - Maybe I should just email maps to those who ask for them -- arendt, Sun 2003-09-21 06:49:15
        25 Megs? -- Redeye, Sun 2003-09-21 08:18:36
        Re: 25 Megs? -- arendt, Sun 2003-09-21 09:59:39
        But 6 Megapixels are at most 18 MB (3 bytes per pixel - RRGGBB)... -- Redeye, Sun 2003-09-21 10:37:31
  - Re: Good to hear that... -- Redeye, Sat 2003-09-20 22:15:04
- Sources of City Data -- arendt, Sat 2003-09-20 14:02:32
  - What's MA? -- Redeye, Sat 2003-09-20 21:18:40
    - MA = Metropolitan Area -- arendt, Sun 2003-09-21 06:43:36
      - I realized that from your original post, but that was only after I posted the reply *blush* -- Redeye, Sun 2003-09-21 08:17:00
        Re:Las Vegas -- arendt, Sun 2003-09-21 10:06:07
        2000 Las Vegas figures -- goobergunch, Thu 2003-09-25 16:22:06
        The 2000 census gives Clark County 1.4 million people -- Redeye, Thu 2003-09-25 19:23:32
        Broken link -- Joseph (Keller), Thu 2017-08-31 23:53:06
        Re: I realized that from your original post, but that was only after I posted the reply *blush* -- goobergunch, Thu 2003-09-25 16:07:06