What Baltimore County Council district would you be in under a redistricting commission’s draft plans? How do the demographics of the draft districts compare with those of the county as a whole? As the commission develops its proposal for accommodating two newly created council seats, zoom in on the maps and drill into the data yourself in the visualizations below.
With public hearings scheduled for 6 p.m. May 12 at the Middle River Recreation Activity Center and 6 p.m. May 19 at the Randallstown Community Center, the county’s 2025 Redistricting Commission has until mid-June to recommend lines for nine council districts that voters will elect members to next year. It will be the council’s first expansion in seven decades, a span in which the county’s population grew more than 70% to over 854,000 residents and became considerably more diverse, from around 4% nonwhite to 48% nonwhite.
Map: Baltimore County councilmanic redistricting draft plan iteration 1
Tip: Click the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the map, type an address in the search box and press enter to center a map on a location.
The commission’s first draft includes two majority Black districts:
- The hook-shaped District 2 tracks Baltimore City’s western border before jutting west to Milford Mill then northwest to parts of Randallstown south of Liberty Road and out to Liberty Reservoir and the Carroll County line.
- The more compact District 3 is centered around Owings Mills, also including parts of Randallstown and Reisterstown.
And one additional majority nonwhite district:
- District 1 cups the county’s southwestern corner, running south then southeast from Woodlawn to Catonsville, Arbutus and Lansdowne.
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Map: Baltimore County councilmanic redistricting draft plan iteration 2
Tip: Click the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the map, type an address in the search box and press enter to center a map on a location.
The commission’s second draft includes two majority Black districts:
- The T-shaped District 2 in southwestern Baltimore County includes a few communities inside the Beltway in the Lochearn area at the top of the T before jutting west to the Patapsco River, which forms the county’s western border, capturing Milford Mill and parts of Randallstown. The bottom of the T from north to south includes parts of Woodlawn and Catonsville outside the Beltway.
- To the north of District 2, District 3 straddles I-795 between the Beltway and Reisterstown then also runs all the way west to the Patapsco and Liberty Reservoir. It is dominated by Owings Mlls.
And two additional majority nonwhite districts:
- The L-shaped District 1 follows the border with Baltimore City from the Gwynn Oak area to the Lansdowne area, hopping the Beltway around Route 40 to include parts of Catonsville and all of Arbutus.
- Resembling a bird in flight, District 7 runs from the Rosedale area east to eastern stretches of Middle River along the bird’s body and flanks northwest to Nottingham and southeast to Essex along the bird’s wings.
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Map: Current councilmanic boundaries
Currently represented by six white men and one Black man, the existing council districts include one majority Black district (District 4, on the county’s west side) and two others that are also majority nonwhite (District 1, in the county’s southwestern corner; and District 2, framing Baltimore City’s northwest border then extending northwest into Worthington Valley).
Tip: Click the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the map, type an address in the search box and press enter to center a map on a location.
Map: Most common race or ethnicity by census block group
The more populated a block group is, the darker it’s shaded on the map.
Like Baltimore County’s redistricting commission, the map below uses data from the 2020 census. However, unlike the commission’s data, the map’s data has not been adjusted to count incarcerated people in their home jurisdictions, an adjustment that state law requires for political boundary drawing and that increases Baltimore County’s population by 0.25%.
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