[OSM-talk] talk Digest, Vol 81, Issue 10

[Richard Welty]

On 5/3/11 7:00 AM, Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com> wrote:
>
> Jaak Laineste <jaak.laineste <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Is there good reason to add addr:country, addr:county, addr:city and
>> other regional tags to all the address tags, if OSM database already
>> has administrative regions for given area?
> I don't think so, except in cases where the postal regions are different from the
> administrative regions - but even there, the right answer would be to add areas
> for postal regions.
for the US, easier said than done. the USPS doesn't publish this data in a
useful form.

the Census Bureau does publish their take on areas corresponding to US
postal codes. don't know how they source it exactly.

in any case, postal codes in the US aren't area directed, they're route
directed, thus putting the codes on ways is a more "correct" model.
even that is potentially risky, but still better than using areas.

richard