<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Serge Wroclawski <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:emacsen@gmail.com">emacsen@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Jeff Barlow <<a href="mailto:Jeff@wb6csv.net">Jeff@wb6csv.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> Anthony <<a href="mailto:osm@inbox.org">osm@inbox.org</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
>>No. Zip codes do not represent geographic regions. They should not be in a<br>
>>the map data, but in a separate database.<br>
><br>
> Please explain your reasoning. This claim seems quite<br>
> counterintuitive to me.<br>
<br>
</div>A Zip Code is a routing code. It doesn't represent geography any more<br>
than you can do a 1:1 mapping of iP address to physical location.<br>
<br>
You can do a "Pretty good" job by simplifying the data, but zip codes<br>
are attributes of addresses, not regions.<br>
<br>
If you want to add these zip codes to objects with addr fields, that<br>
would be accurate, but you can't accurately represent a zip code as a<br>
region.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
- Serge<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br></div></div></blockquote></div>I don't understand why you wouldn't want ZIP Codes in OSM. Do they not represent a geographic area in some parts of the country? In my area, each ZIP Code represents a specific geographic area. One can easily figure out what town someone is from based on their ZIP Code. Is this not the case everywhere?<br>
<br>-Jeremy<br>