New maps

It's redistricting season in the city. The boundaries of San Francisco's eleven supervisor districts have to be redrawn to more closely equalize the population among them every ten years based on the laterst census. People move and crowd into new areas. Some new housing gets built -- there are changes.

Mission Local is providing deep coverage of the redistricting process. This link let's you play with various proposed maps and look at the racial and economic characteristics of each map.

Click to enlarge.

This map is a screen grab from a subsequent article by reporter Will Jarrett about how the redistricting task force has tentatively settled on a possible solution. The red lines are the current districts. The green lines are the new ones. The public comment phase of the process seems to have focused on keeping the Tenderloin within District Six where it has been for the last 20 years. That District has added a lot more people, so much of the jigsaw puzzle is inevitably rooted in how to chip away at its margins.

It's not over, but the task force is coming closer to deciding. It is supposed to finish its work by April 15.

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As anyone who has been following Walking San Francisco would imagine, I feel intimately acquainted with all these lines, since I organized the project of walking both sides of all the city's streets using the district and precinct maps. Some random thoughts:

• Several of the earlier proposed districts would have carved up the Haight-Panhandle area. I have an aging hippie friend who might have found himself in District 2 with the Marina and the Presidio. He'll be glad the greater Haight area still seems to be in District 5 along with the Western Addition, and Hayes Valley.

• However the excision of all the Inner Sunset from District 5 into District 7 strikes me as a fairly major change. That's a very progressive neighborhood being added to the vast, semi-suburban reaches of District 7.

• Mostly, I'm struck by how few big changes have happened over the last 20 years. I had a minor consulting role in drawing the first iteration of these district lines in 2000. After a period without districts, these eleven areas were hammered out then, more or less from scratch. There's been far less population change than might have been expected. I guess we really don't build new housing, though at ground level where I've been walking, it sometimes feels as if there is construction everywhere.

• I wonder if the electoral divisions within the new districts will be anything like the old precincts. They shouldn't be. With so many of us voting by mail or drop box these days, the Department of Elections should not need to put up and staff so many polling places. There are complications, but that's the part of the process where I'd expect the largest changes.

UPDATE, April 5: And then, a day later, the Task Force changed up and voted again for a map the eviscerates District 5. All the Mayor's appointees were in on the switch. It isn't over til its over.