UPDATE: I have posted and accepted a fully working solution in the answers section. Any code in this section is to be used as reference for comparison to your own NO
COMPLETE SOLUTION:
Here's the solution which will resize the map AFTER the user has released the edge of the window to resize it, and center it in the parent container.
function draw(ht) {
$("#mapContainer").html("");
map = d3.select("svg");
var width = $("svg").parent().width();
var height = ht;
// I discovered that the unscaled equirectangular map is 640x360. Thus, we
// should scale our map accordingly. Depending on the width ratio of the new
// container, the scale will be this ratio * 100. You could also use the height
// instead. The aspect ratio of an equirectangular map is 2:1, so that's why
// our height is half of our width.
projection = d3.geo.equirectangular().scale((width/640)*100).translate([width/2, height/2]);
var path = d3.geo.path().projection(projection);
d3.json('plugins/maps/world.json', function(collection) {
map.selectAll('path').data(collection.features).enter()
.append('path')
.attr('d', path)
.attr("width", width)
.attr("height", width/2);
});
}
draw($("#mapContainer").width()/2);
$(window).resize(function() {
if(this.resizeTO) clearTimeout(this.resizeTO);
this.resizeTO = setTimeout(function() {
$(this).trigger('resizeEnd');
}, 500);
});
$(window).bind('resizeEnd', function() {
var height = $("#mapContainer").width()/2;
$("#mapContainer svg").css("height", height);
draw(height);
});