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America is too big. Here’s how to split it into five UK-sized countries.

Queen Elizabeth II smiles as she visits Lancaster Castle on May 29, 2015, in Lancaster, England.  (Photo by Andew Yates - Pool/Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth II smiles as she visits Lancaster Castle on May 29, 2015, in Lancaster, England. (Photo by Andew Yates - Pool/Getty Images)
Pool/Getty Images
Dylan Matthews is a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox's Future Perfect section and has worked at Vox since 2014. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.

This map — made by redditor Hormisdas — divides the US into five regions, each with roughly the same population as the United Kingdom. It's primarily a good reminder for our former British masters of their fundamental insignificance in the world, but it's also a neat way of visualizing the relative size of different American regions:

The US divided into 5 UK-sized units

Hormisdas

Hormisdas explains that because there are roughly 4.8 times as many people in the US as in the UK, each of these regions is a smidge smaller than the UK. In 2011, the UK had a population of 63,181,775; Hormisdas made each of these regions have about 61,749,108 people (as of the 2010 census).

Hormisdas has made something of a specialty of these kinds of maps. Here's one divvying up the US into eight units roughly the size of California (New England/New York is smaller by about 2.1 million people):

The US, as eight Californias

Hormisdas

Here's the same thing, but with 12 Texas-size regions (plus a much smaller "remainder" region enveloping Kansas, Oklahoma, and swaths of Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana):

The US, as 12+ Texases

Hormisdas

Hat tip to the Independent.

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