what if your nationality was based on distance to nearest capital city?

using qgis 2.10 to render, using the new drop shadow drawing effect. Inspired by this article on StrangeMaps

 

The map shows whether or not your nationality would change if you were allocated nationality based on the nearest existing capital city, rather than existing country boundaries.

 

If you live in an orange area, you live closer to some other country's capital than you do to your own.

 

The USA, for example, would cede territory to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, Iceland (!) and Barbados. Iceland seems a stretch until you remember that shortest lines can cross the poles :)

 

A normal voronoi tesselation on a mercator map won't cut it here, as distances are not preserved across the whole map. This means going down the voronoi route results in some odd results, like Mexico grabbing the west coast of Canada.

 

Distances were calculated over a discrete 0.5 degree regular grid using the Vincenty formula, so the distances take into account the fact that the world is round and ever-so-slightly squished.

 

Here's a version showing the how the country boundaries would look.

Done