The thing about the gerrymandering conversation is that there are a lot of little issues getting conflated when it comes to district drawing.
People are talking about gerrymandering more because of the 2010 lines, which seemed undemocratic. But they bring up examples of crazy districts that much predate 2010. And often, as APK is suggesting, those crazy districts are drawn that way to create majority minority districts, which were intended by Democrats to elect minority representatives. Of course, that also has the effect of sucking Democratic votes out of other districts and turning them redder. And then we get into the whole discussion of urban vs. rural, to say nothing of the fact that these districts are supposed to represent actual local governance blocs, so that people with common interests by virtue of their geography are grouped together.
I think this is why APK is saying we need to be clear as to what issue we're trying to solve. If the districts are just ugly, well, honestly, is that really a problem in itself?
Personally I think that nonpartisan redistricting is an end in itself. I am not an expert in mapmaking and am happy to leave the questions up to experts, but we should remove politics from the discussion. (Obviously this is not easy to do.) It isn't likely to solve the structural disadvantage that Democrats have in the House -- we need proportional representation for that. But we really have a responsibility to create nonpartisan democratic institutions.