Worldcon Site Selection Politics

[kevin_standlee]

I am concerned about rumblings over the current Worldcon site selection election. Specifically, I've heard people say that if Kansas City doesn't win, it proves that the relatively new "no-zone" site selection system is broken and needs changing. For heaven's sake, it's only been in full operation for the last three election cycles (the previous three years were a transition period). It takes a lot longer than that to figure out whether a system is working or not. We did three-year lead time for almost twenty years before going back to two years.

The same complaints inform me that the center of the continent will be completely frozen out under "no-zone," and that Denver certainly isn't "Central" (although it looks that way from here in California), but neither is Chicago! That is, Denver is "West" and Chicago is "East." And when I asked about Texas, they told me that it's "South." That means "Central" consists of a pretty small area: Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Oh, and possibly western Illinois and Wisconsin, but not Chicago and not Milwaukee.

Some have pointed to the lack of a Minneapolis Worldcon as further evidence of bias against the center. Minneapolis, for instance, is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the US & Canada to not yet host a Worldcon. But like the old joke about Murray and God, you have to buy a lottery ticket in order to win the lottery, and aside from Minneapolis in '73, there are have been no serious bids from Minneapolis. (Which is a shame, really, because it's a nice city with a good looking convention center and relatively close downtown hotels.)

Frankly, I expect "no-zone" will lead to slightly fewer Worldcons in what was the old Central zone (which did include Chicago and Texas; sorry about that, folks), because Worldcons are now more likely to follow general population demographics, and the edges of the continent have more people living there than the center. But accusations that the con will bounce back and forth between Boston and Anaheim are just silly.

Edit, 11:35: Fixed geographic typo pointed out in comments.

Comments

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm not sure how KC losing proves that the no-zone system is broken.

I do know that the bid was theirs to lose (as long as they made an effort) and there hasn't been much visible activity since SMOFcon.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The reasoning runs that bids from the "real" Central zone (which substantially would consist of Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg, I think) are always at a disadvantage to any bid from the East or West (and Montreal is certainly East).

It's a sort of a new version of the "wimpy zone" theory. The fact that they don't consider Chicago to be Central isn't even relevant here, because they'd probably say, "Even if Chicago is Central, it lost last year anyway." My counter-argument was that the election was so close last year that some sort of institutional bias can't be considered relevant -- on that narrow a margin, it's almost a coin flip.

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

I would consider Chicago more Central than Winnipeg, but that might be my USA East-coast bias showing. (i.e. if the Sout can separate themselves off from the rest of the Central Zone, than Canada should also...)

In fact, if you don't count Chicago, Toronto or San Antonia, except for Winnepeg, there hasn't been a "Central" Zone Worldcon since 1976. If anything, I would think that proves to those who say that no-zone is broken that the old system was even worse...

Though it almost sounds like those people would like a "Target-zone" system. A central circle in one zone, the East, South, West, and North (Canada) in another and rest of the world at any time...

[bovil.livejournal.com]

When I was living in Milwaukee, I decided that the eastern edge of "central" was Michigan and Indiana, and the western edge of "central" was the Dakotas and Nebraska. If it's still relatively flat, it's "central." If it's in the foothills on either side, it's the beginning of "eastern" or "western."

I don't count Toronto as "central" (as I don't count Ohio either) but I definitely count Chicago and San Antonio.