About ridingbuilder
Ridingbuilder is an app for users to create, view and analyze their own Canadian federal and provincial electoral district maps, using a combination of 2021 Census data and recent federal and provincial electoral maps and results.
The inspiration came from Dave's Redistricting App in the United States, which has been around since the 2010 Census. Although redistribution is not as controversial a process in Canada as it is in the US (thanks to gerrymandering), there is still a great interest in Canada into how riding boundaries are drawn, and I aimed to get the app ready in time for the start of the 2022 federal redistribution process.
Future plans for ridingbuilder include:
• spring 2022: expansion to the 3 territories
• spring 2022: notional federal and provincial election results
• summer 2022: dissemination block (street) level data
• summer-fall 2022: 2021 Census demographic data as it is released by Statistics Canada
• TBD: une version française
If you have any more ideas on new features or how to improve ridingbuilder, please e-mail (webmaster@election-atlas.ca) or tweet me.
How to use
To start, choose a province or territory from the main page or the bar at the top. You will be presented with 3 options - starting with a blank map, or the existing federal or provincial map. Choose the number of ridings you want to draw and click "Start mapping".
There are 2 levels of geography currently available on the site:
• Level 1: These are based on municipal and census subdivision boundaries. Larger cities have been split by ward or neighbourhood, smaller (sub-1000 population) were merged into larger ones.
• Level 2: The basic building blocks of ridingbuilder, these are custom-made subdivisions designed to have a population of roughly 2000 in urban areas, less in rural areas. As much as possible, they follow current and former municipal, census subdivision, census tract, federal and provincial electoral and municipal ward boundaries. In addition, they are often split using civic address community boundaries in the Maritimes, polling station boundaries in Quebec, Ontario and BC; and township and range boundaries on the Prairies. In some cases, other boundaries (major roads, rivers, polling division boundaries) were also used to keep population down to a manageable level.
More levels of geography will be added in the coming weeks and months.
To add a block to a riding, simply click the button next to a riding number and click a block on the map. There is also a text box next to each riding number for you to add a riding name.
To add multiple blocks, double click on the map to automatically add anything your mouse hovers over. Double click again to stop.
The "District Details" tab in the top left will show you further details on your currently selected riding, which will include electoral and demographic data once it is added to the app. Likewise, the "Block Details" tab will display info for the block you are currently hovering over.
If you're almost done but still have some nagging unassigned population you can't find, the "What's Missing?" tool will show it for you.
You can save your progress by clicking "Save" in the top left. It will download a CSV file which you can re-upload. A shapefile download is in future plans.
Sources
As stated above, population and much of the geography data comes from the 2021 Census, and is governed by Statistics Canada's Open Data License.
All federal and provincial electoral boundaries came from the relevant electoral agencies. Visit election-atlas.ca's about page for sources and legal information.
Municipal wards were also used to determine boundaries in most municipalities of 10,000 population or more which have them. For Alberta, a shapefile of all municipal ward boundaries was graciously supplied by Alex McPhee.
Where other boundaries split dissemination blocks (StatsCan's smallest level of geography), a combination of the Open Database of Addresses and Microsoft's Canada building footprints were used to assign population.
Ridingbuilder is not affiliated with Statistics Canada or any federal or provincial electoral agency, and no endorsement by them is implied.