Do You Know Where You Live?

An anonymous submitter writes "Thanks to GPS, it seems quite a few people are discovering they don't live where they thought. Prior to GPS, state, county and city borders were part law, part measurement, and part guesswork. Now, they're able to go back and discover where actual borders should be, and it's making many people unhappy. Some familes in Rhode Island are finding out they may actually live in Connecticut. Each state, county and city wants as much land as possible, because it means more tax income. The people caught in the middle simply want to know where they'll send their kids for school."

Comments

well...

[Auckerman]

I suspect in the cases sited, which used rivers to determine boundries, you will see the old common law agreements sticks. When you are measuring within a few feet to find a spot that moves (a few yards) with the seasons, on both sides of the border no less), you're new "accurate" measurement has little value and one is still stuck with simple common agreement.

Would be an easy case to present, and keeping common agreed boundries is a no brainer. If one starts using fixed points on boundries, who's to say a narrow river that is used as a boundry will not just move entirely into another state or county...imagine the implications for water management...

No rational person wants that.

Reminds me of Four Corners....

[wowbagger]

Last year, I went through Four Corners - for those of you not up on your US geography, Four Corners is the point at which Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah all meet, being the only place in the US where 4 states meet.

I was struck by the arbitrariness of this location - it was nothing but a meeting of fictional lines on a map. There was no magical property of this location - c was still 3E8 m/sec (to 1 significant digit), 9.8 m/sec^2 acceleration, no majestic peaks, poles, or pyramids rising from the ground. Save for a decision made by a bunch of beaurcrats there was nothing special about this location.

This article strikes me the same way. Due to a complete non-event (the changing of a line on a map), people's lives are going through upheaval.

So we are able to more accurately define these imaginary lines. Why do we need to change the location of the border - why not just more accurately define existing practice. Look at a map of Kansas - the state USED to be a simple rectangle, until somebody decided to use the river to define the northeast corner. Now we have the silliness of "Kansas City, Mo!"

It just seems so wasteful!