How to Draw a Community of Interest in DistrictBuilder
In redistricting, a Community of Interest (COI) is a group of people who share common concerns and who would benefit from being in a single district. COIs are often based on the knowledge of residents who live in them and they often fall along racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic lines. Generally, it’s considered a good redistricting practice to take into account COIs. Some states even require they be considered.
While DistrictBuilder doesn’t currently support an advanced COI tool, it is nevertheless possible to create your own COI by simply drawing a map with one district. Read on to learn how to draw a COI in DistrictBuilder and how to add it to your map and/or export it in the GIS shapefile format (which many redistricting commissions accept).
Creating a Community of Interest from an Organization Template
For some Organizations, we created COI templates. If that’s what you are using, see below. If not, move on to the next section.
Some of our Organization pages provide a custom template for you to create a COI. Click Use this template to begin drawing your COI and check with the page organizers for guidelines on submitting the map. Otherwise, follow the instructions below to draw the COI.
Creating a Community of Interest Map in DistrictBuilder
For my Community of Interest, I’m going to make a map of the neighborhood of Hardscrabble in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, based on my own personal knowledge of the area. To identify your community in DistrictBuilder, first, create a New Map of the region you are drawing by clicking New Map. Give your map a name — use the name of the COI you are drawing. Choose the region, then select Custom in the Districts section. Set 1 as the Number of Districts. If you would like to make several COIs, you’ll need to repeat this process for each one.
Choose Population Deviation Tolerance to be 100, so your map always passes the population deviation threshold. Click the Create map button.
Once on your map, you’ll see the typical layout of DistrictBuilder with just one district to create. When creating your COI, use the same tools as you would to create any other district — select blocks or blockgroups and add them to the district. It can be helpful to display population labels, especially if you are drawing a COI based on racial or ethnic data. Click the labels dropdown at the top-right of your map to display a demographic label on blocks or blockgroups.
Since drawing a community of interest is the same as drawing a district, you can view and analyze statistics on your community by opening the expandable demographics viewer.
Exporting and Visualizing your Community of Interest Map as a Reference Layer
Once you have completed drawing your community of interest, you may want to submit it to a redistricting commission or display it on one of your other maps as a reference layer. If you are submitting the map to a redistricting commission, be sure to verify what formats they accept. You will probably need to export it as a shapefile. To do so, click Export at the top of the page and choose Export Shapefile. This will create a zipped shapefile. The shapefile will be given your map name — so make sure your map name is the name of your community of interest before you export it!
If you would like to display the COI as a reference layer on your districts map, start by clicking Export GeoJSON. Next, open the districts map that you’d like to add the COI file to. Click the plus sign next to the Reference layers text at the bottom to open the Reference layers panel. Upload the GeoJSON you just exported and it will display on the map. You don’t need to select a Label Property. Now, your COI will be displayed as a Reference layer you can toggle on the map!
If you are interested in supporting your community through a customized redistricting page on DistrictBuilder, reach out and we’ll help you get started.
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