Local politics that isn't really local

August 16, 2009 8:41 PM

Which municipal district has the largest constituency?

I was looking through some of the City Council districts for Los Angeles and New York, and they're pretty large (about a quarter million and 150,000, respectively), and I was wondering if someone would know off the top of their heads which cities and/or counties have extremely large constituencies.

I know that LA County's Board of Supervisors have 2 million people districts which I think may be the biggest non-Senate legislative districts in the country, but I want to know if there are any other large ones.

posted by Weebot to law & government (10 comments total)

Brisbane city council in QLD, Australia is, I believe, the largest municipal body in Asia Pacific and one of the biggest in the world, servicing over a million people now. .

It's probably my favourite thing about Brisbane (!). With that much money on the table, there's very little corruption, and scales of economy really kick in with things like libraries, garbage disposal, etc.
posted by smoke at 8:45 PM on August 16

But each councillor is only responsible for a constituency of 23,000 voters according to your link (Toronto, my nearest large city, has 116,208 per ward as contrast). Isn't Weebot breaking it down to the individual district/ward/parish?
posted by saucysault at 8:56 PM on August 16

Brooklyn has a population of 2,556,598 (or so). And there's a "borough president" whose constituency is all of it.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:08 PM on August 16

Mumbai has 12 million people and 24 wards so about half a million people per ward. But they have 227 councillors - I am not sure how the wards are divided up to them. Those meetings must be crazy loud.
posted by saucysault at 9:19 PM on August 16

Hmm... what kind of jobs are you talking about? You say you are interested in legislative districts, but you mention the L.A. Board of Supervisors, which is really an executive sort of thing. If you're willing to include county-wide elected officials who may serve in some kind of executive capacity, then you might have things like the Brooklyn Borough President (2.5 million). If you include mayors who govern more than one county, then NYC probably takes the cake (at least in the U.S.).

If you want purely legislative, the Texas State Senate has only 31 members, which gives each senator around 780K (though individual districts may vary).
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:20 PM on August 16

Houston City Council has five at-large councilors, each of whom represents about 2 million people.
posted by raf at 4:53 AM on August 17

Houston City Council has five at-large councilors, each of whom represents about 2 million people.

Raf, your link states that the council represents 2 million people, not 2 million each. I know Houston is large but it ain't Beijing large. From the link:

According to the City Charter, once the population of the City of Houston exceeds 2.1 million, expected for the 2010 census, two more geographic council districts will be added.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:01 AM on August 17

I think Raf is saying that each councilor represents the whole population of Houston because they are "at-large".
posted by soelo at 9:29 AM on August 17

New York City's Borough Presidents no longer have any power to actually *do* anything. The mayor, on the other hand, is still the executive of all 5 boroughs together.
posted by Citrus at 1:03 PM on August 17

Yea, soelo explained what I meant. There are also district representatives who represent a subset of the city.
posted by raf at 9:04 PM on August 23