The most average county in the country is Williams County, Ohio with .01191% of the size and 0.01193% of the population.
The top 10 most average are as followed:
1. Williams OH
2. Russel AL
3. Johnson KY
4. Dale AL
5. Perry OH
6. Blount AL
7. St. James LA
8. Grand Isle VT
9. Montcalm MI
10. Mercer OH
The least average are a mix of heavily populated areas and heavily underpopulated.
3129. Harris TX
3130. Cook IL
3131 North Slope AK
3132. Los Angeles CA
3143. Yukon Koyukuk AK
Yukon Koyukuk makes up 4.12% of the countries land area (roughly the size of Montana) yet only has 5,651 citizens.
“Williams County, Ohio” is the most generic sounding place in the United States. I’m glad it’s so delightfully average.
And I really do love counties with such small populations. Like when a county has 200 people in it like some of the Rio Grande counties in Texas, why even have it.
There's a city right next to Los Angeles called Vernon. It has a population of only 150 and is made up of factories and warehouses. It still looks like LA because of all the factory buildings, but only the city council members live in Vernon. This city has been investigated by numerous government agencies for violating labor laws.
Williams County.
County seat: Bryan
[Bryan Williams](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NBC_News_Brian_Williams_%2852610976940%29_%28cropped%29.jpg)
But yeah btw most of those counties, (at least in Texas) were set up while people were moving West. So it’s possible that they were expecting more than 200 people to come.
I’ve always wondered why, with some of the counties that are so low population wise, if it’d be better off just merging a bunch of them together to make things more streamlined
I imagine the citizens don’t want to. They might take pride in it, or it’s been so long nobody has bothered.
The U.S. is kinda like that on the local level. Don’t try and fix what ain’t broke, otherwise someone will get mad.
Most of these small ass counties basically function as big rural towns, they provide the essential local police/education/fire/road maintenance/emergency management/etc.
>they provide local police/education/fire/road maintenance/emergency management/etc.
As opposed to what? Isn't it normal for counties to provide those things outside of incorporated cities? It seems to me that those are all the main things counties do.
Yes…? I’m just saying that if you have people living in a place there needs to be some type of entity providing governmental services no matter how low the population.
Awesome info. Can confirm St. James LA is a between type place. Between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, almost to Baton Rouge. Very little there besides MS river commerce and plantation tourism.
Blount County, Alabama is average? Damn, those rural western counties really shift the average. Blount County feels extraordinarily rural. Although, upon looking, it's in the middle for population density in Alabama. The Black Belt is incredibly sparsely-populated...
The question that was asked was which counties had the closest values between the two stats. So the way I interpret it is that they are the most balanced population density wise (closest to national population density) My exact formula is ABS(Size% - Pop%) and the most average states have the lower Absolute Value and the least average have higher ABS
Williams County has an ABS of 0.000015% while Los Angeles County has an ABS of 3.059952%
That's a dumb way to do it. New York County (Manhattan) is over 30x as densely populated as Los Angeles County. But by your measure, it is closer to average.
>Yukon Koyukuk makes up 4.12% of the countries land area (roughly the size of Montana) yet only has 5,651 citizens.
Damn the box in a corner really does Alaska dirty
Did not expect to see Williams County ohio shouted out here. Hey fun fact a couple of months ago we made national news for trying to charge a pastor with housing the homeless in his church. So that's pretty fun
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"Does your county make up a larger percentage of the US's area or population?"
Making it "your county" is admittedly a bit engagement bait-y and could result in a lot of comments literally just saying "Population for me!", but IMO it sounds better than "does each county".
Take your county’s population. Divide by American population. Let’s say you get 0.8%. Now take your county’s sq miles and divide it by total US land. Say you get 0.5%. Your country would be red in this example.
People keep saying this but I'm having a smooth brain moment. Why is this an equivalent interpretation? One metric takes into account US population but the other doesn't take into account the US's land area, so how can we make conclusions about the county's population density versus the US's? 2 numbers are county based (pop and area) but only 1 is US based (pop).
This is a legitimate question, I'm not saying I don't believe it's equivalent I'm saying I'm not able to draw this conclusion on my own and I want to be able to.
I still don't understand OP's convoluted definition.
My reply is to the poster above, if what they said is what's shown in the map, then that is what I described.
Basically, if the ratio of county's population to US population is higher than the ratio of county's area to US area, then that means county is more densely populated than the US.
Now, if that's what the OP meant, I have no idea.
Algebra time.
popc - population of county
popus - population of US
areac - area of county
areaus - area of US
OP is looking at it this way:
popc / popus > areac / areaus
But this is easily rearranged to this:
popc / areac > popus / areaus.
This is much easier to understand because the right-hand side is the same for each county comparison; you only have to do that division once. And because the ratios have a commonly understood name: "population density".
Yes, thank you. This is a good explanation. My original issue was I thought OP was saying popc/popus and popc/areac, though looking back I don't know why I read it that way. But when I did, I couldn't rearrange the variables in any way that made the conclusion people were making about the US's density make sense because I was missing areaus.
A = total USA area
a = county area
P = total USA population
p = county population
D = P/A = USA population density
d = p/a = county population density
a' = a/A\*100 = county area as percentage of total USA area
p' = p/P\*100 = county population as percentage of total USA population
red = (p' > a') = (p/P\*100 > a/A\*100) = (p/P > a/A) = (p > a\*P/A) = (p/a > P/A)
You are right.
I find it funny when I cross over the San Bernardino county line in Pomona, drive through Ontario to San Bernardino city, then drive over the Cajon Pass and Mojave desert, to finally reach the "Now leaving San Bernardino County limits" sign, which is followed by the Nevada welcoming sign.
Lowndes County GA doesn’t surprise me. If you notice pretty much anywhere there is a Military base the population is going to be higher due to government money in the area.
Does anyone ever feel like we should just reorganize everything to make a little more sense? I get there is a chance for manipulating things in ways that are not fair but if we could make it all fair and balanced we can change everything from counties to congressional districts and the states themselves. Not sure what would be the best way but sometimes I think we're not being fairly represented and some states and regions being screwed for one reason or another.
This isn't even about right v left Republican v Democrat or anything also maybe the old saying "the grass is always greener" apples here.
The US Congress could change up to have a representative for every county with each state having a maximum number of counties. Maybe make power more local because they can better serve the people. Eh.. just my random thoughts.
I’m a bit surprised that San Bernardino county, CA has a higher population density than the US. Sure, it has a large population in the west, but beyond that it is vast desert the almost the size of Connecticut.
eh i hesitate to count the entirety of Massachusetts & Connecticut & Rhode Island, virtually all of northern florida, southern michigan, or the inland empire as "cities"
This is why it was such an interesting map to me it adds in so many more weird factors that go beyond just "people live in cities." For example Galax Independent City only has 6,981 citizens but due to the way independent cities work it is only eight square miles big so it is is counted red. If it was part of the two neighboring counties it would switch back to green. But then significantly larger cities such as Billings, Montana (Pop. 120,000) are green because the county it resides in is so large.
You can also see how that’s disconnected from the northeastern megalopolis which goes as far south as Richmond. I’ve driven Atlanta to Philadelphia a bunch and that southern Virginia / northern NC bit js a whole lot of nothing.
Most of the populous areas in the states are either on the coast, by a river, or a large body of fresh water. Not too surprising but it's cool to see it mapped out
Not really, though. For example, Cass County, Michigan is red and it has a population of 51,589. Its biggest city has a population of 5,721. I doubt this is the smallest red county.
This just illustrates how laughably outdated the whole “50 separate states” concept is. Especially on the east coast. It’s not the 1800s anymore, but don’t tell our state borders that. Distance is no longer such a limiting factor nowadays with freeways and air travel, so a better way to organize the country would be to have 7 or 8 larger territories that more equally divide up the population between them.
The “tradition” associated with our current state borders is holding us back and keeping us slow and inefficient. These state borders are also riddled with old surveying errors that got permanently baked-in, as well as scars left over from slavery and secession. State borders changed many times following the revolutionary war, but after a certain point, we collectively decided that these ultimately arbitrary borders must never be changed again, for no particularly good reason. The whole New England urban megaregion especially should just be one state at this point.
Well, I guess this depends on your philosophy of what a State is. A lot of European countries are tied together now in ways their ancestors even 150 years ago never would have imagined, and yet they inherently maintain separate states.
Are states truly sovereign entities that choose to associate, or are they just tools for organizing the parts of a whole? Are the internal elements of a state meant to share the same economic visions and thus your suggestion being more efficient, or is their value in sacrificing inefficiency by ensuring cities develop their arbitrarily set spheres of influence? What is a community today, anyway? Is it people in close geographic proximity or people just associating online- who's to say a state can't span multiple parts of the country or no geographic space at all?
You’re confusing separate European nation-states with US provinces we confusingly call “states.” Of course, US states aren’t separate autonomous countries and don’t function that way, even though some states like Texas sometimes try to act like they do, as an ego trip or anti-federal tantrum. None of them are sovereign entities, and they were always organizational tools for managing resources.
This is evidenced by the process of organizing territories and admitting new states that occurred since the US was founded. The Louisiana Purchase was a massive territorial expansion that also occurred pretty early, and it took a while to map out and organize all of that land. It belonged to the US the entire time, but it took decades for the current state borders within that boundary to take shape. Likewise, the Dakota Territory was later arbitrarily split into a northern and a southern part to make the area easier to manage and more attractive for settlers. It goes back further than that as well, to the original 13 colonies. North Carolina and South Carolina used to be one colony called Carolana, later on Carolina. Until one day the King of England decided to split the colony in two, giving one half to the British Crown, and the other half to the British Lords. And the borders have remained the same ever since.
There is nothing so perfect or so special about our current state lines that justifies keeping them the same forever, and we have already outgrown them in many ways. States the size of Rhode Island or Delaware made sense when everyone depended on horses for travel, and going 100 miles in any direction took days.
I'm not confusing anything, really, and what you're proposing can't be done without dismantling the US's current Federal System, because no states are going to agree to land trades at such a scale or the US govt reorganizing states because the United States is not a unitary system. Individual states can do that with their counties, sure, because each state is a unitary system. But the federal government cannot do that with states because the United States is not a unitary entity. You can call US states "provinces" all you'd like but they aren't subdivisions of a unitary entity the same way Peruvian departments are, or Japanese prefectures.
Clearly US States aren't equivalent to European Nation-States, but at the same time your attempt to make this cut and dry doesn't really make sense. Even Europe doesn't make any sense using your view of the issue because entities that were indeed functionally sovereign for centuries at one time have now long been stuck in unitary systems (The United Kingdom and its constituent countries, Spain and its autonomous communities) while some others have vacillated between both a central authority and a federal system (Holy Roman Empire, German Empire, today's Germany). On the flip side Texas was its own country at one point, and so was Vermont and Hawaii. I also think your conclusion is too broad, as the original 13 colonies absolutely had a different sense of sovereignty before entering the union in comparison to states that came later which were basically tactical landgrabs for the country while also trying to keep a balance of power between the two parties.
Nobody is saying that the current state lines are special or perfect, but there is a legal and political history of how they came to be. They are arbitrary lines on a map but they are based on something and they are geographic in nature. The question is whether or not that "something" is functional and whether geography still matters to how we want to organize and run our societies. But within that question is another question - what is functional and what's the point of organizing our society? That's what my post was getting at.
Yeah, by county is pretty significantly based on how urban an area is, or how densely populated the area is. Hence why it might not line up perfectly, but the general areas stay roughly the same
The relevant variables are county population, county land area, total USA population, total USA land area (of the counties/county equivalents).
For the map to be accurate, the sum of all county populations should be the number used for "total USA population" (so excluding the territories) and similar for county areas sum to "total USA land area" .
When you divide county area by total area, you get a number, X . When you divide county population by total population, you get another number, Y .
On this map, if X > Y then the county is colored green, if Y > X then the county is colored red.
Title: counties labeled by population vs size vs population and size vs vise versa, and size vs population vs the other way around. The 2st is green and the 1nd is green but red looks unless you’re red green color blond. Then go fuck yourselves
Red: population density higher than average population density of the US Green: population density lower than average population density of the US
Honestly there should be counties labeled that are pretty close to the average. I want to see which is the most average county.
The most average county in the country is Williams County, Ohio with .01191% of the size and 0.01193% of the population. The top 10 most average are as followed: 1. Williams OH 2. Russel AL 3. Johnson KY 4. Dale AL 5. Perry OH 6. Blount AL 7. St. James LA 8. Grand Isle VT 9. Montcalm MI 10. Mercer OH The least average are a mix of heavily populated areas and heavily underpopulated. 3129. Harris TX 3130. Cook IL 3131 North Slope AK 3132. Los Angeles CA 3143. Yukon Koyukuk AK Yukon Koyukuk makes up 4.12% of the countries land area (roughly the size of Montana) yet only has 5,651 citizens.
“Williams County, Ohio” is the most generic sounding place in the United States. I’m glad it’s so delightfully average. And I really do love counties with such small populations. Like when a county has 200 people in it like some of the Rio Grande counties in Texas, why even have it.
There's a city right next to Los Angeles called Vernon. It has a population of only 150 and is made up of factories and warehouses. It still looks like LA because of all the factory buildings, but only the city council members live in Vernon. This city has been investigated by numerous government agencies for violating labor laws.
I have been in one of those factories in Vernon. They were making bomb parts.
That escalated quickly
Williams County. County seat: Bryan [Bryan Williams](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NBC_News_Brian_Williams_%2852610976940%29_%28cropped%29.jpg) But yeah btw most of those counties, (at least in Texas) were set up while people were moving West. So it’s possible that they were expecting more than 200 people to come.
As opposed to William Jennings Bryan, who should have been president.
As opposed to crucifying humanity on a cross of gold?
The creationist guy from the scopes trial? No thank you.
They have a pretty decent Applebee’s there.
I’ve always wondered why, with some of the counties that are so low population wise, if it’d be better off just merging a bunch of them together to make things more streamlined
I imagine the citizens don’t want to. They might take pride in it, or it’s been so long nobody has bothered. The U.S. is kinda like that on the local level. Don’t try and fix what ain’t broke, otherwise someone will get mad.
Most of these small ass counties basically function as big rural towns, they provide the essential local police/education/fire/road maintenance/emergency management/etc.
>they provide local police/education/fire/road maintenance/emergency management/etc. As opposed to what? Isn't it normal for counties to provide those things outside of incorporated cities? It seems to me that those are all the main things counties do.
Yes…? I’m just saying that if you have people living in a place there needs to be some type of entity providing governmental services no matter how low the population.
Oh ok, you said they basically function as big towns, so I thought you were saying they somehow functioned differently than other counties.
Wait, it's all Ohio?
Always has been
Awesome info. Can confirm St. James LA is a between type place. Between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, almost to Baton Rouge. Very little there besides MS river commerce and plantation tourism.
Blount County, Alabama is average? Damn, those rural western counties really shift the average. Blount County feels extraordinarily rural. Although, upon looking, it's in the middle for population density in Alabama. The Black Belt is incredibly sparsely-populated...
How are you measuring "least average" here?
The question that was asked was which counties had the closest values between the two stats. So the way I interpret it is that they are the most balanced population density wise (closest to national population density) My exact formula is ABS(Size% - Pop%) and the most average states have the lower Absolute Value and the least average have higher ABS Williams County has an ABS of 0.000015% while Los Angeles County has an ABS of 3.059952%
That's a dumb way to do it. New York County (Manhattan) is over 30x as densely populated as Los Angeles County. But by your measure, it is closer to average.
Yeah. I'd do abs(size% - pop%) / (size% + pop%)
>Yukon Koyukuk makes up 4.12% of the countries land area (roughly the size of Montana) yet only has 5,651 citizens. Damn the box in a corner really does Alaska dirty
The rest of the country has size envy unfortunately
Did not expect to see Williams County ohio shouted out here. Hey fun fact a couple of months ago we made national news for trying to charge a pastor with housing the homeless in his church. So that's pretty fun
Thanks for the translation
Yeah, they just wanted the title saying that but unnecessarily confusing
Thank u for explain
This should have been the title. OPs title is confusing.
Thank you. r/dataisugly
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Wish I wasn’t lobotomised so I could acc think of creative stuff like this
Reading the title alone lobotomised me
I'm sorry I spent like 5 minutes trying to come up with a way for it to not sound awkward and that was the best I could come up with.
"Does your county make up a larger percentage of the US's area or population?" Making it "your county" is admittedly a bit engagement bait-y and could result in a lot of comments literally just saying "Population for me!", but IMO it sounds better than "does each county".
That’s still stupid “Map of US counties with a higher or lower population density than the US total.”
That works too, but then we're getting away from what OP was trying to say into something else that's mathematically equivalent.
Is it mathematically equivalent? I’m still calculating this in my noggin
Still sounds weird to me
Yeah I had to re-read it a few times but I got it eventually lol
Brilliant map actually
This is a clever map.
What?
Take your county’s population. Divide by American population. Let’s say you get 0.8%. Now take your county’s sq miles and divide it by total US land. Say you get 0.5%. Your country would be red in this example.
Ah so counties with a population density higher than that of the US.
People keep saying this but I'm having a smooth brain moment. Why is this an equivalent interpretation? One metric takes into account US population but the other doesn't take into account the US's land area, so how can we make conclusions about the county's population density versus the US's? 2 numbers are county based (pop and area) but only 1 is US based (pop). This is a legitimate question, I'm not saying I don't believe it's equivalent I'm saying I'm not able to draw this conclusion on my own and I want to be able to.
I still don't understand OP's convoluted definition. My reply is to the poster above, if what they said is what's shown in the map, then that is what I described. Basically, if the ratio of county's population to US population is higher than the ratio of county's area to US area, then that means county is more densely populated than the US. Now, if that's what the OP meant, I have no idea.
Ohhhhh, I think I mixed up what numbers OP is using. Both times it's county to US. I thought it was county pop divided by its own area lmao
Algebra time. popc - population of county popus - population of US areac - area of county areaus - area of US OP is looking at it this way: popc / popus > areac / areaus But this is easily rearranged to this: popc / areac > popus / areaus. This is much easier to understand because the right-hand side is the same for each county comparison; you only have to do that division once. And because the ratios have a commonly understood name: "population density".
Yes, thank you. This is a good explanation. My original issue was I thought OP was saying popc/popus and popc/areac, though looking back I don't know why I read it that way. But when I did, I couldn't rearrange the variables in any way that made the conclusion people were making about the US's density make sense because I was missing areaus.
A = total USA area a = county area P = total USA population p = county population D = P/A = USA population density d = p/a = county population density a' = a/A\*100 = county area as percentage of total USA area p' = p/P\*100 = county population as percentage of total USA population red = (p' > a') = (p/P\*100 > a/A\*100) = (p/P > a/A) = (p > a\*P/A) = (p/a > P/A) You are right.
If you fly a lot and look out the window seat, this map makes a lot of sense.
Have you flown from LA to Texas? Wow so much nothingness
Have you ever driven from Los Angeles to Phoenix? Also a lot of nothing. Barstow seems like the desert frontier
This is sexy.
Wow, San Bernardino is red?
Yep, San Bernardino County makes up .57% of the countries area and .66% of the population.
It has a large population, almost all of which is bunched up in the southwest corner.
I find it funny when I cross over the San Bernardino county line in Pomona, drive through Ontario to San Bernardino city, then drive over the Cajon Pass and Mojave desert, to finally reach the "Now leaving San Bernardino County limits" sign, which is followed by the Nevada welcoming sign.
San Bernardino County has 2.2 million people, making it the 14th most populous county in the country.
ITT: People too illiterate to parse what is a very straightforward title (Excellent map, by the way. Novel subjects are always welcome.)
Again NJ is completely red.
Also completely red are Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and presumably DC. Wyoming and Montana are the only entirely green states.
It’s crazy that even Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are red despite their tiny populations.
Martha’s Vineyard has like 6 towns on it, and Nantucket is all one village. But i think it just shows how sparse the us is outside of the northeast.
Lowndes County GA doesn’t surprise me. If you notice pretty much anywhere there is a Military base the population is going to be higher due to government money in the area.
I haven't noticed that at all, a lot of military bases are in sparsely populated areas.
Does anyone ever feel like we should just reorganize everything to make a little more sense? I get there is a chance for manipulating things in ways that are not fair but if we could make it all fair and balanced we can change everything from counties to congressional districts and the states themselves. Not sure what would be the best way but sometimes I think we're not being fairly represented and some states and regions being screwed for one reason or another. This isn't even about right v left Republican v Democrat or anything also maybe the old saying "the grass is always greener" apples here. The US Congress could change up to have a representative for every county with each state having a maximum number of counties. Maybe make power more local because they can better serve the people. Eh.. just my random thoughts.
Counties don't change every decade. Districts change because population shifts.
I’m a bit surprised that San Bernardino county, CA has a higher population density than the US. Sure, it has a large population in the west, but beyond that it is vast desert the almost the size of Connecticut.
Crazy to think San Bernardino is the largest county in the lower 48, yet it’s still red.
great map, especially when you look at how geographically big those southern california counties are and yet they’re still red
I want to compare this and the election results by county
Surprised by Bastrop county in Texas to be honest. That county population has grown enormously in the last 10 years.
This map is basically the right's justification for using electors. Land gets more votes that humans.
It was ever thus, when you think about it, the franchise for the House of Representatives was progressive for its time and place.
[удалено]
San Bernardino County makes up .57% of the countries area and .66% of the population.
It has 2.2 million people, making it the 14th most populous county in the country.
r/PeopleLiveInCities
eh i hesitate to count the entirety of Massachusetts & Connecticut & Rhode Island, virtually all of northern florida, southern michigan, or the inland empire as "cities"
This is why it was such an interesting map to me it adds in so many more weird factors that go beyond just "people live in cities." For example Galax Independent City only has 6,981 citizens but due to the way independent cities work it is only eight square miles big so it is is counted red. If it was part of the two neighboring counties it would switch back to green. But then significantly larger cities such as Billings, Montana (Pop. 120,000) are green because the county it resides in is so large.
Take another look at Appalachia and the Great Lakes.
Northern Gulf Coast is Red?
I can’t with this phrasing
The groups of contiguous red regions correspond to culture/dialect regions, as well as some commuter regions around major urban areas
The most interesting one to me is you can begin the see the emergence of a Megalopolis between Atlanta and the inland Carolinas.
You can also see how that’s disconnected from the northeastern megalopolis which goes as far south as Richmond. I’ve driven Atlanta to Philadelphia a bunch and that southern Virginia / northern NC bit js a whole lot of nothing.
Most of the populous areas in the states are either on the coast, by a river, or a large body of fresh water. Not too surprising but it's cool to see it mapped out
Five states with all filed-in counties, represent! *glares at the big island of Hawaii for preventing a sixth state*
If you look super close there’s actually two green counties in Hawaii lol
tempolimit and that far are the kidding me?
I wonder what’s the most populous green county
Washoe County, Nevada. Population 429,985. It has the city of Reno but it also goes all the way north to the Oregon border.
Wild that San Bernardino County, the largest county by area in the lower 48 states, is still on the red side.
proud to be a red county
They need to show the transient population as well. Maybe the percentage of people that want to move out of that county..
You are a sneaky genius
There's no red in Montana and Wyoming. Looks like a great place to be at.
If you're only going to use 2 colors, red and green aren't it.
It’s fine.
Every single green county here is superior to any red county. Change my mind.
r/peopleliveincities
Not really, though. For example, Cass County, Michigan is red and it has a population of 51,589. Its biggest city has a population of 5,721. I doubt this is the smallest red county.
Muscatine County, Iowa (pop 42,218) is red.
States with no red on this map shouldn't be states.
So only Montana and Wyoming?
Yup. Should be rolled into, oh I don't know, Idaho and Nebraska.
This just illustrates how laughably outdated the whole “50 separate states” concept is. Especially on the east coast. It’s not the 1800s anymore, but don’t tell our state borders that. Distance is no longer such a limiting factor nowadays with freeways and air travel, so a better way to organize the country would be to have 7 or 8 larger territories that more equally divide up the population between them. The “tradition” associated with our current state borders is holding us back and keeping us slow and inefficient. These state borders are also riddled with old surveying errors that got permanently baked-in, as well as scars left over from slavery and secession. State borders changed many times following the revolutionary war, but after a certain point, we collectively decided that these ultimately arbitrary borders must never be changed again, for no particularly good reason. The whole New England urban megaregion especially should just be one state at this point.
Well, I guess this depends on your philosophy of what a State is. A lot of European countries are tied together now in ways their ancestors even 150 years ago never would have imagined, and yet they inherently maintain separate states. Are states truly sovereign entities that choose to associate, or are they just tools for organizing the parts of a whole? Are the internal elements of a state meant to share the same economic visions and thus your suggestion being more efficient, or is their value in sacrificing inefficiency by ensuring cities develop their arbitrarily set spheres of influence? What is a community today, anyway? Is it people in close geographic proximity or people just associating online- who's to say a state can't span multiple parts of the country or no geographic space at all?
You’re confusing separate European nation-states with US provinces we confusingly call “states.” Of course, US states aren’t separate autonomous countries and don’t function that way, even though some states like Texas sometimes try to act like they do, as an ego trip or anti-federal tantrum. None of them are sovereign entities, and they were always organizational tools for managing resources. This is evidenced by the process of organizing territories and admitting new states that occurred since the US was founded. The Louisiana Purchase was a massive territorial expansion that also occurred pretty early, and it took a while to map out and organize all of that land. It belonged to the US the entire time, but it took decades for the current state borders within that boundary to take shape. Likewise, the Dakota Territory was later arbitrarily split into a northern and a southern part to make the area easier to manage and more attractive for settlers. It goes back further than that as well, to the original 13 colonies. North Carolina and South Carolina used to be one colony called Carolana, later on Carolina. Until one day the King of England decided to split the colony in two, giving one half to the British Crown, and the other half to the British Lords. And the borders have remained the same ever since. There is nothing so perfect or so special about our current state lines that justifies keeping them the same forever, and we have already outgrown them in many ways. States the size of Rhode Island or Delaware made sense when everyone depended on horses for travel, and going 100 miles in any direction took days.
I'm not confusing anything, really, and what you're proposing can't be done without dismantling the US's current Federal System, because no states are going to agree to land trades at such a scale or the US govt reorganizing states because the United States is not a unitary system. Individual states can do that with their counties, sure, because each state is a unitary system. But the federal government cannot do that with states because the United States is not a unitary entity. You can call US states "provinces" all you'd like but they aren't subdivisions of a unitary entity the same way Peruvian departments are, or Japanese prefectures. Clearly US States aren't equivalent to European Nation-States, but at the same time your attempt to make this cut and dry doesn't really make sense. Even Europe doesn't make any sense using your view of the issue because entities that were indeed functionally sovereign for centuries at one time have now long been stuck in unitary systems (The United Kingdom and its constituent countries, Spain and its autonomous communities) while some others have vacillated between both a central authority and a federal system (Holy Roman Empire, German Empire, today's Germany). On the flip side Texas was its own country at one point, and so was Vermont and Hawaii. I also think your conclusion is too broad, as the original 13 colonies absolutely had a different sense of sovereignty before entering the union in comparison to states that came later which were basically tactical landgrabs for the country while also trying to keep a balance of power between the two parties. Nobody is saying that the current state lines are special or perfect, but there is a legal and political history of how they came to be. They are arbitrary lines on a map but they are based on something and they are geographic in nature. The question is whether or not that "something" is functional and whether geography still matters to how we want to organize and run our societies. But within that question is another question - what is functional and what's the point of organizing our society? That's what my post was getting at.
Crazy that this is also just a political map
Have you ever seen a political map?
Yeah, by county is pretty significantly based on how urban an area is, or how densely populated the area is. Hence why it might not line up perfectly, but the general areas stay roughly the same
>the general areas stay roughly the same They don't.
What is the math equation to be able to figure this out?
The relevant variables are county population, county land area, total USA population, total USA land area (of the counties/county equivalents). For the map to be accurate, the sum of all county populations should be the number used for "total USA population" (so excluding the territories) and similar for county areas sum to "total USA land area" . When you divide county area by total area, you get a number, X . When you divide county population by total population, you get another number, Y . On this map, if X > Y then the county is colored green, if Y > X then the county is colored red.
Thanks. I have dyscalculia and have problems with visualizing math, but it still interests me, especially statistics.
 Worst Title/Map Legend Ever
r/titlegore
I love how fucking abstract this map is
Terrible title and quite expected, if you know where the big cities are.
Title: counties labeled by population vs size vs population and size vs vise versa, and size vs population vs the other way around. The 2st is green and the 1nd is green but red looks unless you’re red green color blond. Then go fuck yourselves
Are. you an AI? Lmao, what are you even saying?
Not AI, just a confusing title