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Many zip codes missing

Open phonon-zz opened this issue 13 years ago • 6 comments

There are many zip codes missing from http://www.openheatmap.com/locationvalueshelp.php?name=zip_code_area

For example, 80129 is missing, Littleton, CO http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/80129/zip-code-80129.asp

Is this an oversight? Can it be fixed or is there a workaround? Otherwise, this is not robust enough for national US mapping...Thanks!

phonon-zz avatar Feb 29 '12 17:02 phonon-zz

Unfortunately there are a decent number of ZIP codes missing from the only public source of their boundaries, the US Census: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/z52000.html I have some ideas on how to create a better open map of ZIPs, but until then it is tough to use for choropleth/colored area maps. One alternative that may work for you is more of a point/circle based map, which does work if you put a column header of 'location' instead of 'zip_code_area' in your source spreadsheet.

petewarden avatar Mar 02 '12 18:03 petewarden

Hmmm...you may want to try the updated 2010 data sets ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/ZCTA5/2010/

has the 2010 ZIP (technically ZCTA5) shapefiles.

phonon-zz avatar Mar 02 '12 19:03 phonon-zz

Stumbled across this ticket while researching the same problem involving django-census-places. I extended that project to load the 2010 zip code boundaries. Sadly, that data set also seems to be missing thousands of boundary definitions.

chrisspen avatar Jan 28 '13 22:01 chrisspen

Another missing one is 06824 from Fairfield, CT.

Jmuccigr avatar Mar 10 '14 17:03 Jmuccigr

I emailed [email protected] and they responded that some ZIPs won't have ZCTA data if they only represent P.O. boxes. So some missing data is expected.

chrisspen avatar Mar 10 '14 18:03 chrisspen

Yes, but my example wasn't one. This is a house address that has it.

Jmuccigr avatar Mar 10 '14 20:03 Jmuccigr