I was wondering if there was an easy way to map out specific zipcodes on the map and show their boundaries? asked 03 Nov '15, 18:33  jbct |
One Answer:
zip codes and their postal code equivalents are "real life" features that have very very strongly different definitons and use depending on the country you are referring to. In some places it isn't possible to talk about a zip code boundary in any reasonable fashion. One of those places is the US (which you are likely asking about). Now you can build polygons from address information (using for example OSM and other sources) indicating roughly where the areas are, but we do not have such information directly in OSM. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_code answered 04 Nov '15, 13:34  SimonPoole ♦ edited 04 Nov '15, 23:51 |
Thank you very much for your response- I was referring to the US. Do you know of any other work-around? Any other mapping programs that are similar to OpenStreetMap?
TIGER may contain some information, see https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-line.html
TIGER has ZCTA (Zip Code Tabulation Area) data, which is an approximation of zip codes, but has limitations depending on your planned usage. Details here: https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/zctas.html