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The rectangularness of countries

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Re: The rectangularness of countries

#101

Post by diego »

zach wrote: post #95
djsumdog wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I feel like there should be a CGP Grey video about this. He has one about London vs the City of London and the weird US/Canada border. Someone also tried to tell me Norwood, Ohio is the largest city within a city (an enclave city), but I can't find a source on that anywhere.

Newark is completely surrounded by Fremont (California) and has over 40,000 residents and is over 13 square miles in area, so if it's not the largest, it's at least near the top. If we discount natural borders like the Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica borders only Los Angeles and has twice as many residents.

Not far from Fremont, Piedmont is completely surrounded by Oakland. 1.6 square miles, 10k residents.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#102

Post by fandango »

filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

From Wikipedia:

Some houses in the town of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau are divided between the two countries. At one time, according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border this simply meant that the customers had to move to a table on the Belgian side.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#103

Post by drieddust »

filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

There are many such enclaves between India and Bangladesh.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/02/enclaves_betwe...

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#104

Post by clock_tower »

mikeash wrote: post #38
akavi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple of different scoring rules that would be interesting, I think. Another one might be: What's the ratio between the area of the country and the smallest rectangle which bounds the country. This would "punish" countries with protuberances more than ones with "in-cuts", which "feels right" to me.

For some reason, your use of "'punish' countries" made me imagine a world where improving this score gets taken seriously by the peoples of the world, leading to countries gradually becoming more rectangular over time, and many terrible wars along the way.

This reminds me of Paradox's strategy games, where players routinely complain about "bordergore" and fight wars to make the map look neater...

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#106

Post by treve »

akeruu wrote: post #91
filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

Our frontiers are sometimes a bit fuzzy to say the last [0] and there is also this place [1] where you can literally be in 3 countries at the same times [0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3378842/Belgium-Neth... [1] https://www.google.be/maps/@50.7543794,6.0212649,17z

The second one is not all that interesting, as any country that borders more than 1 other country would have a point like that ;)

Belgium should have 3

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#107

Post by flukus »

djsumdog wrote: post #87
filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

Wow. I feel like there should be a CGP Grey video about this. He has one about London vs the City of London and the weird US/Canada border. Someone also tried to tell me Norwood, Ohio is the largest city within a city (an enclave city), but I can't find a source on that anywhere.

I think he did one about enclaves and exclaves.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#108

Post by lisper »

stephengoodwin wrote: post #99
acheron wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weird about US/Canada? I thought it was pretty straightforward. Was this about the "Angle" on Lake of the Woods?

There's the exclave Point Roberts, Washington ( http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0408/feature7/ ), which falls ever so slightly south of the 49th parallel.

I once visited Port Roberts just to see the border crossing. I drove in from the Canadian side, parked my car, and walked across the border into the U.S. without being challenged. No one asked for my passport. As far as I could tell, no one even noticed that I had crossed the border. But when I tried to walk back into Canada the Canadians gave me a pretty hard time and almost didn't let me back in. It was an interesting experience.

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#109

Post by greesil »

filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

It really brings to mind "City and the City".

https://www.amazon.com/City-Random-House-Readers-Circle/dp/0...

Re: The rectangularness of countries

#110

Post by caf »

vacri wrote: post #89
filvdg wrote: post #80

For people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders

Until this past year, the India/Bangladesh border was similar - there was even a triple-deep enclave (india inside bangladesh inside india inside bangladesh... I think...). They just recently did a land swap to make the border more sane, and also easier on the inhabitants, who didn't have freedom of movement between the parts. https://youtu.be/gtLxZiiuaXs?t=5m10s

Yes, that third-order enclave was Dahala Khagrabari (#51): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahala_Khagrabari
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