petewarden/openheatmap

Many zip codes missing

Opened this issue · 6 comments

phonon-zz commented

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!

petewarden commented

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.

phonon-zz commented

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.

chrisspen commented

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.

Jmuccigr commented

Another missing one is 06824 from Fairfield, CT.

chrisspen commented

I emailed geo.tiger@census.gov and they responded that some ZIPs won't have ZCTA data if they only represent P.O. boxes. So some missing data is expected.

Jmuccigr commented

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