[Talk-us] [Imports] Zipcode Import

[Anthony]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Still, the post codes are *commonly* used as a shortcut geo reference; it
> is a very popular way of doing e.g. a store finder on a web site - enter
> your post code and we'll show you the nearest store. Because of this, there
> is high demand for post codes to be available in OSM and I am certain that
> we will eventually either map or import them.


I have responded to that, though.  A single point in the approximate center
of the general area where a zip code is used is fine.  I don't think OSM is
really the best place to store those (slightly less than) 99999 points,
because it so easily stands alone and isn't something that lends itself to
public editing (you just import a database every so often, it's not really
something individual OSMers can survey).  But I'll get over that - if you
really get a kick out of importing 99,999 or so zip code centroids, fine.
In fact, I can probably find a CSV file where the centroids have already
been calculated for this.  It's quite a common application.  (You'll
basically be converting someone's table of zip codes to lat/lon pairs into
OSM nodes, so geocoders can then take those OSM nodes and convert them back
to a table of zip codes to lat/lon pairs.  But, whatever, have a ball.)

If you want to do more than that, as Katie said, "It would be appropriate to
attach zip code as attributes to addresses."
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