A Reddit user's map divides the US into 300 equal-population regions, creating artificial Bay Area boundaries that ignore city and county lines.

A new interactive map making the rounds on Reddit divides the United States into 300 regions of roughly 1.1 million people each, and in the Bay Area, the results slice through familiar boundaries with mathematical precision.

The map, shared by Reddit user dalce63 on r/bayarea and created using the dougymander mapping tool, groups census block groups using an algorithm that prioritizes contiguity and population balance. Each region contains approximately the same number of residents, regardless of existing city or county lines.

In practice, this means San Francisco's 874,993 residents (2020 Census) would share a region with parts of the Peninsula, while Oakland's 433,797 people get bundled with portions of surrounding East Bay cities. The artificial boundaries create new geographic groupings that cut across the nine-county Bay Area's 7.7 million population.

The tool uses data from the 2020 Decennial Census and 2020 American Community Survey, according to its documentation. But the methodology hasn't been independently verified by demographers, and there's no indication the map has influenced official redistricting discussions in California.

The interactive version is hosted at demoose.vercel.app, where users can explore how the equal-population algorithm reshapes familiar regions across the country.