[Talk-us] Legislative districts, Land-use zoning, etc.

[Mike Thompson]

Many borders, particularly international borders, are prominently marked
("monumented") (e.g. [1]), and thus are verifiable on the ground (and
sometimes the monumentation is so prominent it is visible from imagery).
It is what is physically monumented on the ground that is the legal border,
from [1]: "If some of the original markers were off by a few dozen -- or a
couple of hundred -- feet here and there, which was inevitable given the
conditions in which the crews worked and the technology of the time, it
doesn’t matter because it is the position of the monuments on the ground,
not the 141st meridian, that is the de facto boundary by treaty."

Legislative districts on the other hand, because they can change (every 10
years in US), are not monumented directly, and therefore would be very
difficult to verify on the ground.  In the US one would have to look up the
official text description of the district, then look up the census blocks
it references (" most redistricting was based on whole census blocks.
Kentucky was the only state where congressional district boundaries split
some 2010 Census tabulation blocks." [2]), and then head out to the field
to observe the features that the census blocks reference. Census blocks are
generally defined by streets, rivers and other physical features [3].

Mike

[1]
http://www.adn.com/article/20140727/trail-monuments-men-border-crews-cut-20-foot-swath-alaska-yukon-line
[2] https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/aboutcd.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_block
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