GIS in Action 2024

In 2022, the residents of the City of Portland approved a ballot measure to revise its election system and implement the creation of four geographic areas to elect councilmembers by district rather than at-large. A 13-member Independent District Commission, selected by the City of Portland, was tasked with the creation of the four districts. Starting with the November 2024 election, constituents of each district will elect three councilmembers to represent them on Portland’s City Council.
FLO Analytics was selected by the City in 2023 to provide technical expertise in redistricting principles, analyze data and maps to assist the Commission in their work, and ultimately to draw the boundaries of the four districts at the direction of the Commission. The criteria to draw the four districts was based on widely used federal redistricting criteria. Districtr—an open-source, browser-based tool—was used by the Commission and public to draw and submit their maps. Over 200 publicly submitted maps were analyzed by FLO and were considered by the Commission. 
 
Creating districts is an extremely data intensive process. Over 50 spatial datasets were provided to the Commission from a wide variety of sources, including the 2020 Census, Metro RLIS, the American Community Survey (2017–2021), and a variety of other sources. These datasets informed the Commission on demographics, socio-economic status, transportation, housing, voter turnout, historically redlined communities, and more.