[Talk-us] US Addressing

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday, November 29, 2012, Brian May wrote:

> On 11/29/2012 9:12 PM, Steven Johnson wrote:
>
>>
>> Secondly, about Census data... The Census Bureau publishes ZIP Code
>> Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs, as polygons) but they are an approximation of US
>> Postal Service data and used for downstream analytical purposes. But as far
>> as USPS is concerned, the ZIP code is a point data feature that only exists
>> to deliver the mail. The USPS does not maintain ZIP codes as polygons.
>>
> For points coming from parcel centroids, Property Appraisers store mailing
> addresses, and they need to get that right in order to deliver the tax
> bills. When the owner mailing address and site address match, I would bet
> there is a high degree of accuracy for the city and zipcode values in the
> site address fields (where they are populated).
>

Is there a compelling reason not to get parcels instead?  As parcels change
shape, the centroid can be easily interpolated.  It's not really possible
to extrapolate geometry from centroid, however.
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