Blog 145: From Gerrymandering to Social Mandering: Ending the Danger of Gerrymandering

Purpose:  To integrate the existing land use, zoning, and master planning powers, which almost all local communities have in California. into the Congressional Redistricting process now discussed in many jurisdictions. by producing lines for the newly required   districts. This would   contribute in a positive manner to the social and economic development of communities by utilizing readily available professional planning resources and institutions and community advocates to avoid any danger of gerrymandering by creating  an integrated and  democratic participatory planning process.   

Call it “social-mandering.”

The full text, 2 1/2 pages, can be gotten by clicking on the following link to the Progressive Planners Network blog: 
<https://www.progressivecity.net/single-post/from-gerrymandering-to-social-mandering>

However, that is only the main text, without my references. The missing references are listed here, if anyone is interested.

• See Nick Corasaniti, “Pennsylvania G.O.P.’s Push for More Power Over Judiciary Raises Alarms,” The New York Times, (Feb. 15, 2021), p. 1: “Democrats are now mobilizing to fight the effort, calling it a thinly veiled attempt to create a new level of gerrymandering, … to change the entire way that judges are selected in Pennsylvania … [to] empower rural, predominantly conservative areas to rewire the State Supreme Court.”
• See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_commission, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Changes_to_achieve_competitive_elections.
• In: Andrea Kahn and Carol J. Burns (eds.), Site Matters: Strategies for Uncertainty through Planning and Design (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 252-266.
• Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926). Details about this decision can be found on its Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_of_Euclid_v._Ambler_Realty_Co.
• On the issue of motivation versus impact under the equal protection clause, see the discussion of “Testing Facially Neutral Classifications Which Impact on Minorities” in the Fourteenth Amendment, in: Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), 61–65. Justice White appears clearly to agree that purposeful discrimination is a necessary component of equal protection clause violation, and may have agreed as well that the same requirement applies under the Fifteenth Amendment. Id. at 94– 103. Only Justice Marshall unambiguously adhered to the view that discriminatory effect is sufficient  to condemn a plan.. Id. at 125. See also Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130, 146–49 & nn.3–5 (1976) (dissenting).