<div dir="auto">Likewise, not everywhere in America has a postal zipcode, but the Census invented ones for their own purposes.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mar 9, 2018 16:13, "Kevin Kenny" <<a href="mailto:kevin.b.kenny%2Bosm@gmail.com">kevin.b.kenny+osm@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Oops, sent an earlier attempt from the wrong place:<br>
<br>
TIGER:zip_left and zip_right were intended to be ZIP codes, because<br>
they were there to help census workers find the houses who hadn't<br>
returned census forms (which were sent out to postal addresses).<br>
They were never entirely correct, though, and were based on an<br>
incorrect mental model of "ZIP code as an area feature" rather than<br>
"a set of discrete points where the truck delivers the mail". So<br>
the whole idea was pretty screwy right from the start. (For instance,<br>
my workplace has a unique five-digit ZIP code. When I started<br>
here back in the day, it didn't have a building number, because<br>
it was the only address in its ZIP code. Eventually the fire<br>
brigade insisted that it have one, and it acquired a vanity<br>
address: One Research Circle.)<br>
<br>
When I'm entering a building address, I fill in number and street,<br>
city, state and ZIP code - the entire tuple. I see very little value<br>
to tiger:zip at this point.<br>
<br>
If I'm moving down a street, entering address after address, JOSM<br>
does handle things quite conveniently, with most of the fields<br>
pre-filled. (I wish it had a custom increment value. A lot of the<br>
streets in my community have building numbers that increment<br>
by 4 instead of 1 or 2, so that there's a little room for expansion<br>
if someone subdivides a building lot.)<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div></div>