[Talk-us] [Imports] Zipcode Import

[Jeremy Adams]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Jeremy Adams <milenko at king-nerd.com>wrote:
>
>> One can easily figure out what town someone is from based on their ZIP
>> Code.  Is this not the case everywhere?
>>
>
> Certainly not.  There are lots of zip codes which represent multiple towns,
> and lots of towns which represent multiple zip codes.
>
> You can usually find out an approximate geographical location from a zip
> code (at least if it isn't an APO/FPO zip code).  But if that's all you
> want, you're best off just representing zip codes as single points in the
> approximate geographical center of all post boxes which receive mail to that
> zip code.  Going in the other direction, from lat/lon to zip code (assuming
> your lat/lon is the location of a building and/or post box), requires a much
> more specialized database which isn't currently available as public domain.
>

But the code still represents a geographic area?  If this is the case, I
don't see why we wouldn't want them in OSM.  It'd be the same as
administrative boundries, county lines, etc.

-Jeremy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20091220/c0023f15/attachment.html>