Redistricting favoring big cities?

[bgwah]

Many major cities have started seeing growth again. But it's usually still below the nationwide growth, and the growth seen in the suburbs, so they'll generally lose CDs again. You mention how DC grew 5%, the first time it's seen growth in a long time. Notable, but the nation grew 10%. If it were part of Maryland or Virginia, a DC-based district would have had to expand into the suburbs.

[bgwah]

Many major cities have started seeing growth again. But it's usually still below the nationwide growth, and the growth seen in the suburbs, so they'll generally lose CDs again. You mention how DC grew 5%, the first time it's seen growth in a long time. Notable, but the nation grew 10%. If it were part of Maryland or Virginia, a DC-based district would have had to expand into the suburbs.

Yes, but it's usually worse than this.

D.C. has pretty much a fixed boundary and was already pretty well built-up, but what about other big cities?

Somebody said that Louisville and Lexington together now make up a much larger proportion of Kentucky's population (even if you adjust Louisville for merging with the county). I'm wondering how close it'll be to bringing Kentucky back into the Democratic column.

I highly doubt Louisville's pre-merger population has exceeded statewide growth.

[bgwah]

Many of the faster-growing cities are sprawling ones that include what many of us would consider suburbs, anyway. So it ultimately comes down to where we've drawn the arbitrary lines on the map. At a glance, though, Atlanta's growth seems fairly impressive, though. But considering its large land area, its total population isn't terribly high, IMO... And I'm not sure how much they annexed.

Seattle's growth has really picked up in the past few years, while it grew quite slowly during the boom years.

[bgwah]

Atlanta's boundaries are quite small and the city itself achieved a large population decades ago before falling as people moved out to the suburbs. The recent population growth is a result of successful in-fill in the city.

132 square miles is pretty large. And I know they did some annexations, but it might not have been very many people. Anyway, it will be interesting to see where the growth was when we get census tract results.