Legislative and congressional districts for the State of Washington were delimited by the author in 1972. Computer models were not used. This article compares the actual with optimal computer plans for the sake of estimating how practical and conceptually satisfactory computer models may be. A “capacity-constrained location-allocation'’model is used, finding equally populous districts such that aggregate travel to the set of district centers is the minimum possible. The model iterates between assignment of sufficient population to district centers and relocation of centers, until no further travel savings occurs. Airline, road and time distances are utilized. The hypothesis that computer models would be inferior to human judgment was rejected. On the average the computer-produced districts tended to be more compact and the set of districts are more efficient than was true of the 1972 plan.
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Richard L. Morrill (1976) studied this question.