North American City Flag Tournament - 2022

The North American City Flags Tournament started two days ago, on November 16, 2022.

After participating in the NAVA City Flag Survey and its 312 new city flags AND the start of the World Cup of Flags 2022 by the Flag Institute, I thought that combining the greatness of North America's best flags AND a tournament would be great fun.

I've culled from over 300 flags, these 80 flags will compete. in the tournament to decide which are the best and the absolute best city flag created since 2000. #CityFlagsTourney22 #vexillology @urbanlifesigns

The line ups for the North American City Flags Tournament are from USA and Canada, and are all adopted to the best of my knowledge from 2000 to present. There's one from 1999 in one division, but I make the rules, so I can allow exceptions. (One entry is from 1999, but that's ok, there are always exceptions, plus 2-3 have unknown adoption dates.)

I've selected 80 of the best and pretty good flags since 2000 (with the one from 1999). An 80 flag full elimination setup means a lot of good flags may get eliminated too early, so I'm using a bit of the World Cup process with round-robins and elimination rounds. 

City flags are placed in four geographic divisions:

• West
• Great Plains
• Midwest
• Atlantic

Because there are so many very good, good, and some decent flags - all 80, I've put 4 flags in each division automatically. All 16 other flags in the division have to fight it out in different round robins and eliminations to get to 4 more to make the final 8 division flags. 

Shown here is the Midwest Division. Prequalified flags are:

Des Moines, Dowagiac, South Bend, & Madison WI.

You may agree or disagree, but I had to make a call and elevate these.
That means the lower 16 will compete for the 4 competitive slots to make the final Division 8 teams

The Midwest has some powerhouse prequalified flags with Des Moines' reinstated bridge flag, Dowagiac's geometric paper fortune teller, South Bend's classic, and the updated Madison WI.

Animals, trains, airplane inspirations, stars, crossroads, rivers, anchors, boats and the letter "E" are included in the 16 competing flags. Thanks to folks who shared Slater and Peoria which didn't appear in the NAVA survey.

The Atlantic Division below includes the Premier Flags of: Coral Springs, Madison GA, Old Town and Burlington, who get an effecitive "bye".

Competing in Rounds 1 and 2, are flags with stars, moons, boats, lighthouses, a castle, fountain, and crossing stripes.

The Atlantic's prequalified flags include Coral Springs' sunshine, Madison's watersheds, Old Town's canoe, and Burlington's lakes and mountains. All solid flags.

Lots of diverse styles competing 16 but few zingers greats.

Thanks to @KeystoneFlag who shared Gettysburg which didn't appear in the NAVA survey due to its adoption in 2000. Yes and we've added Kingston ON because:
1. Castles are cool
2. Frankly the east has fewer great flags

The third of four divisions, the West Division has powerhouses like Portland, Spokane and Pocatello, as well as newbies like SLC, and Bellingham.

The West's 4 prequalified flags that automatically will go to Round 3 are Aspen CO's snowflake in a leaf, Spokane's river and falls, Pocatello ID's mountains, and Portland's rivers and forests.

The remaining 16 competing flags of the West will compete to get one of the 4 open Premier flag spots. Round 1 is a round robin to narrow the field to 8 flags, followed by Round 2 in which the top 4 compete in elimination matches to get to Premier status.

Salt Lake City ranks as one of the largest cities with a new city design- will that factor in? or will small Seward Alaska pull out a surprise? Or will the silhouette of an elk muscle into the top 4 over the tight knot of Palouse WA? 

The Great Plains Division is a POWERHOUSE Division. Comprised of only 6 states and 2 provinces, North America's plains have been breeding superb city designs.

I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 of these are in the semi finals.

Powerhouse Kansas has 2 premier flags and 8 flags in the competing group. Not to be outdone, Nebraska & Texas each have 3 in competition. Canada is represented by Altona Manitoba.

Dodge City, Sioux Falls, Topeka and Tulsa are all such strong designs they could win the tournament. Thus they are in the Premier slots for Great Plains.

#vexillology #vexillologie #cityflag #flag #CityFlagsTourney22

I don't know what's going on in the Great Plains but some these 16 flags competing for 4 premier slots could easily be "Premier" status in other divisions. Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas have such an abundance of new and well designed city flags!

So folks know, in Round 1, we'll see the two top vote getters move to Round 2.

That means we'll first have Altona, Corpus Christi, Augusta, and Ashland in competition.

The two flags with most and second most votes move on to Round 2 against the other top 2 votes of each column

Similarly, Round 1 will see Kingman, Newton, Lincoln, and Lindsborg in a round robin, with the two higher vote getters moving to Round 2.

So imagine if each flag got these votes: Top two vote getters were Kingman 45, and Lincoln 32, plus Corpus Christi 34 and Altona 29, then in Round 2 elimination, Kingman & Altona would meet, while Corpus Christi & Lincoln would meet.
#CityFlagsTourney22 

However, rather than these 2 sets of 2 meeting in Round 2, there would be 4 sets of 2, ultimately yielding 4 competitively selected Premier Flags in the division, to compete against the preapproved flags. #CityFlagsTourney22

See the tournament diagram below:

Showcasing North American City Flag Tournament flags from the Midwest Division from Round 1, we have Manhattan KS, Norman OK, Milford NE, and Baldwin City KS.

Which 2 of these flags will make it to Round 2?!?

#CityFlagsTourney22