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The Philadelphia Districting Contest: Designing Territories for City Council Based Upon the 2010 Census

Author

Listed:
  • Ram Gopalan

    (School of Business, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey 08102)

  • Steven O. Kimbrough

    (Operations and Information Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104)

  • Frederic H. Murphy

    (Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Fox School of Business, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122)

  • Nicholas Quintus

    (Office of Watersheds, Philadelphia Water Department, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107)

Abstract

The City of Philadelphia recently redesigned districts for its council members based upon the 2010 census. The districting process evinced considerable public interest and engagement because council districts from the prior census had significant shortcomings. During the 2010 redistricting process, several public interest groups came together to organize a districting contest. The organizers hoped to increase public engagement in the districting process and to proactively offer several well-constructed examples of city council districts that minimize gerrymandering. We were active participants in the contest, developing methodologies for finding good solutions to large integer programs that enabled us to win in one contest category and make presentations before the city council in this and another category. This article describes the unfolding of various events surrounding the districting process, the methodologies we developed, and the influence that the contest ultimately had on the design of city council districts.

Suggested Citation

  • Ram Gopalan & Steven O. Kimbrough & Frederic H. Murphy & Nicholas Quintus, 2013. "The Philadelphia Districting Contest: Designing Territories for City Council Based Upon the 2010 Census," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 43(5), pages 477-489, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:43:y:2013:i:5:p:477-489
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.2013.0697
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Sommer Gentry & Eric Chow & Allan Massie & Dorry Segev, 2015. "Gerrymandering for Justice: Redistricting U.S. Liver Allocation," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 45(5), pages 462-480, October.
    2. Ram Gopalan & Tingnan Lin, 2022. "Tackling gun violence: is systems thinking necessary?," OPSEARCH, Springer;Operational Research Society of India, vol. 59(3), pages 908-929, September.
    3. Christian Haas & Lee Hachadoorian & Steven O Kimbrough & Peter Miller & Frederic Murphy, 2020. "Seed-Fill-Shift-Repair: A redistricting heuristic for civic deliberation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-34, September.
    4. Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda & Camilo Campos-Valdés & Maurcio Morales Quiroga & Matías Moreno-Faguett & Jordi Pereira, 2020. "A Multi-Criteria Pen for Drawing Fair Districts: When Democratic and Demographic Fairness Matter," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-26, August.

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