  A plus-contact representation of a planar graph $G$ is called $c$-balanced if
for every plus shape $+_v$, the number of other plus shapes incident to each
arm of $+_v$ is at most $ c \Delta +O(1)$, where $\Delta$ is the maximum degree
of $G$. Although small values of $c$ have been achieved for a few subclasses of
planar graphs (e.g., $2$- and $3$-trees), it is unknown whether $c$-balanced
representations with $c<1$ exist for arbitrary planar graphs.
  In this paper we compute $(1/2)$-balanced plus-contact representations for
all planar graphs that admit a rectangular dual. Our result implies that any
graph with a rectangular dual has a 1-bend box-orthogonal drawings such that
for each vertex $v$, the box representing $v$ is a square of side length
$\frac{deg(v)}{2}+ O(1)$.
