Regionalist System

[BananaLee]

I had a crack at the regional system and I'm really curious now.

If all the MPs are based in "cities", who the heck represents the farmers and the boys in the farms?

I'm talking rural electorates. They're people too...

 

[Provolution]

I think we could make some of the smaller towns centers for such rural areas.
For example, a quiet place like Garit could have 30-40 000 people, have two MPS, where the remaining 160-170 000 lived in smaller towns and settlements around. I think 100 000 people per MP is a good rule of thumb.

I can see we got 5-10 % rural people, and 85-90 % living in cities.
This means we got 9/10 MPs coming from larger settlements.

 

[BananaLee]

100,000 people per MP!?

I actually see Civilitas as less of a urban place - i.e. most of the urbs are focused around the tradey areas and the rest being rural. For example, the way Cook Island is going now I reckon most of the south would be urban - Portsborough and North Shore Cities being the being settlements and the rest would be rural/touristy.

I don't know. It's up to the masses I suppose.

 

[Samuelson]

As the designer of this regional system, I can tell you that MPs from towns represent not only their town but the surrounding countryside of farms and such.

 

[BananaLee]

Aye, my worry about that is that the rural farmers might be rather unhappy at that.

Speaking from a place where power is so focused in the towns (they call them cities here), in spite of a less urban-based electorate system - many farmers are highly dissatisfied with their lack of representation (things like all *their* tax money coming to *us* in the cities to build our roads, etc.)

 

[mangxema]

If somebody wants to represent a rural area, that would be great... I've never lived in the country though, so I'm sticking to the city.

I suspect there are going to be a lot of cities along the coast, but not much in the middle. That low-lying area north of the isthmus would be good farmland. (I think..)

 

[h4ppy]

Davenport might be a city but it still represents farming interests, I see no problems.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

I think we could make some of the smaller towns centers for such rural areas.
For example, a quiet place like Garit could have 30-40 000 people, have two MPS, where the remaining 160-170 000 lived in smaller towns and settlements around. I think 100 000 people per MP is a good rule of thumb.

I can see we got 5-10 % rural people, and 85-90 % living in cities.
This means we got 9/10 MPs coming from larger settlements.

Garit is the port of the larger city of Al-Hakimah (the relationship would be about the same as [wiki]Piraeus[/wiki] to [wiki]Athens[/wiki])...it's not quiet.

 

[Provolution]

Oh, Like NOTB to NOTA, as I advocated in another game

 

[The Yankee]

We could always have areas. If we need to make new districts or something if we get more people, then so be it. Just say the population grew somewhere and they voted to be a distinct community.

 

[Provolution]

I think the population needs to stay fixed or at least stable.

However, someone can run for local elections if they settle somewhere, and make the previous candidate part of the opposition.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

100,000 people per MP!?

I actually see Civilitas as less of a urban place - i.e. most of the urbs are focused around the tradey areas and the rest being rural. For example, the way Cook Island is going now I reckon most of the south would be urban - Portsborough and North Shore Cities being the being settlements and the rest would be rural/touristy.

I don't know. It's up to the masses I suppose.

Members of the US House of Reps represent ~600,000 each....

 

[Provolution]

We could make it 50 000, if people are more comfortable with that. I suggest we poll the base number we agree on and multiply it with the number of MPs, anyone willing to do that?

 

[Perfection]

I think the best thing to do is once the cities are created carve out districts that they are seats of. Districts will then be recorded with a specific population (based on number of MPs there) at which point new cities and districts will not be allowed and all new MPs will be join a spot only if the number of MPs per unit population isn't below a certain threshold.

 

[Provolution]

I think the best thing to do is once the cities are created carve out districts that they are seats of. Districts will then be recorded with a specific population (based on number of MPs there) at which point new cities and districts will not be allowed and all new MPs will be join a spot only if the number of MPs per unit population isn't below a certain threshold.

That is a vacancy? We cannot have hollow constituencies sitting idle. But you are right, best to get all MPs, then figure out the base population. We can extrapolate the number of MPs we get within a deadline with the history (we got something good going here, me and Happy) and the Pacific demographic standards. For example, bountiful and large California got only 40 million people.

I would anticipate we landed at 5-10 million.

 

[Perfection]

That is a vacancy? We cannot have hollow constituencies sitting idle.

It's way too much work to ensure continious representation. If for some weird reason we need to have a community representative where the current ones are ghosts Abgar and I can briefly step in.

 

[Smidgey]

New Gorgie is partially rural. It is made up of many towns with no huge city districts. Kind of like countryside New England.

This is just something I put together, but this is what I imagine some of the terrain and buildings of New Gorgie to look like:



I also chose the Fern as the areas symbol to represent the heavily forested nature of the area. Obviously these photos are taken from other places, but they try to represent the colonial style towns of the area, the fact that it is forested, the river and the fact that it is surrounded by mountains on both sides.