Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Internal Division Errors

A while ago I started a project to redraw the counties and county-level equivalent areas in each of the 50 states.  I have several reasons for undertaking such an odd task.  First, I like maps and playing with maps.  Second, it is way for me to virtually visit places I'll never have a chance to get to in real life.  Between the various online map layers, one can get a decent sense of what just about any area of the country is like.  Third, in many states, reconfiguring the internal divisions is something that should be done.  Some counties are too large, others are divided by nearly impassible geography, many could be re-drawn with more natural boundaries, and quite a few are very under-populated.  The new boundaries attempt to balance size, population, watershed boundaries, economic interconnections, and other factors.  Not every newly-drawn or re-drawn county is optimal, but I feel the states I have completed are much better divided than than they are now.  Eventually I'll get to all of the states, but it will take a few more years.

Due to limitations in GMaps, some states may be split into two pages.  In the case of California, I manually split the map up to avoid having to jump around between three or more pages.  You can view more than one of the maps at a time by bookmarking each one in your GMaps account, and then clicking on each in your "My Places" list.  It's kludgy, but it works.*

  • Alabama counties
  • Alaska counties
  • Arizona counties
  • Arkansas counties
  • California counties (Northern, Central, Southern)
  • Colorado counties
  • Connecticut counties
  • Delaware counties
  • Florida counties
  • Georgia counties
  • Hawaii counties
  • Idaho counties
  • Illinois counties
  • Indiana counties
  • Iowa counties
  • Kansas counties
  • Kentucky counties
  • Louisiana counties
  • Maine counties
  • Maryland counties
  • Massachusetts counties
  • Michigan counties
  • Minnesota counties
  • Mississippi counties
  • Missouri counties
* - If you have a GIS program installed, download the KML for each state, and then load them all into a new project, along with state and county layers.

1 comment:

Clara Mellor said...
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