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Writer's picturestephaniehayden

Melrose Maps, Where the Wild Things Are - Odd District Lines


I created neighborhood and community maps for Melrose while I was there functioning as the Neighborhood Community Council Chair.


That yellow diamond in the drawing on the left is the Melrose 27x community where I lived and contributed to community problem solving from 2019-2022. That drawing is a boundary outline of Oakland and the 7 districts within it. Each has its own City Council Member and there is an 8th Oakland City Council Member who functions in an, "At Large", capacity meaning they oversee what's going on in every district.


The Oakland district outline map reminded me of something, and one night it hit me. "Where the Wild Things Are". I don't know if everyone knows this book but it was one of my favorites growing up. I thought it also seemed appropriate because Melrose is definitely wild.


I created the maps, there are many more than this post, because we wanted to understand why it was so hard, sometimes seemingly impossible, to get any responses from any of the four City Council members assigned to Melrose Community 27x.


It was clear that no one knew for sure which side of the street belonged to which district. So, as part of my initial joining the Melrose Chair position I talked with neighbors and Council Members to try to figure out where boundaries actually were so I could put them in a simple map.



Zoom into the Oakland district map and you get District 5 on the left, District 4 in the top middle, and District 6 along the bottom to the right. Melrose is the diamond shape with part of its blocks in each of the three districts.


See here how there are only about 20 blocks in District 6.




And here there are only about 30 blocks in District 4.


This explains why we were sort of last on the list for every district Council Member's priorities. We were in the side corner of their very large districts and not located where the most vocal constituents are in proximity to their Council Member's offices.



I figured we needed to differentiate ourselves and surface our needs in new ways to get Council Members' attention. We also needed to be confident which Council Member belonged to which side of the street so we could start getting more traction resolving issues with the correct Council Member office.


There are more stories about the Melrose Maps, so search and bring those up to read more!



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