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Designing New Electoral Districts for the City of Edmonton

Author

Listed:
  • Burcin Bozkaya

    (Sabanci School of Management, Sabanci University, Orhanlı-Tuzla, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey)

  • Erhan Erkut

    (Ozyegin University, 34662 Istanbul, Turkey)

  • Dan Haight

    (Centre for Excellence in Operations, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2R3, Canada)

  • Gilbert Laporte

    (HEC Montreal, CIRRELT, Montreal, Quebec H3T 2A7, Canada)

Abstract

Every few years, the city of Edmonton, Canada must review and evaluate changes to its electoral district boundaries. The review process that was completed in 2009 resulted in modifying the district plan from a six-ward system with two council members in each to a single-member 12-ward system. The authors of this paper designed the redistricting plan. This paper describes the algorithm we applied to solve the problem and the decision support system we used. The algorithm is based on a multicriteria mathematical model, which is solved by a tabu search heuristic embedded within a geographic information system (GIS)-based decision support system. The resulting district plan meets districting criteria, including population balance, contiguity, compactness, respect for natural boundaries, growth areas, and integrity of communities of interest. This plan was formally approved as a city bylaw and used in the municipal elections in 2010.

Suggested Citation

  • Burcin Bozkaya & Erhan Erkut & Dan Haight & Gilbert Laporte, 2011. "Designing New Electoral Districts for the City of Edmonton," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 41(6), pages 534-547, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:41:y:2011:i:6:p:534-547
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1110.0544
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bozkaya, Burcin & Erkut, Erhan & Laporte, Gilbert, 2003. "A tabu search heuristic and adaptive memory procedure for political districting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 12-26, January.
    2. Ricca, Federica & Simeone, Bruno, 2008. "Local search algorithms for political districting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(3), pages 1409-1426, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Rui Fragoso & Conceição Rego & Vladimir Bushenkov, 2016. "Clustering of Territorial Areas: A Multi-Criteria Districting Problem," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 14(2), pages 179-198, December.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Alexander Butsch & Jörg Kalcsics & Gilbert Laporte, 2014. "Districting for Arc Routing," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 809-824, November.
    5. Douglas M. King & Sheldon H. Jacobson & Edward C. Sewell & Wendy K. Tam Cho, 2012. "Geo-Graphs: An Efficient Model for Enforcing Contiguity and Hole Constraints in Planar Graph Partitioning," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1213-1228, October.
    6. Photis, Yorgos N., 2012. "Redefinition of the Greek electoral districts through the application of a region-building algorithm," MPRA Paper 42398, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2012.
    7. Lu Chen & Boxiao Chen & Quoc Trung Bui & Minh Hoàng Hà, 2017. "Designing service sectors for daily maintenance operations in a road network," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(8), pages 2251-2265, April.
    8. Hyun Kim & Yongwan Chun & Kamyoung Kim, 2015. "Delimitation of Functional Regions Using a p-Regions Problem Approach," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 38(3), pages 235-263, July.

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