7 ms·
Zip Code Map of the United States
- evanb 1y agoThis map is a neat visualization but is incomplete so far as there are some missing jurisdictions. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, for example.
- serbuvlad 1y agoThe + button doesn't work on Firefox (143.0.1; Linux; flatpak; x86-64). The - button works and so do other ways of zooming in (scrolling, double click).
- joecool1029 1y agobroken in mobile safari as well.
- llimllib 1y agolink to the zip code data is broken too; https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/assets/us-zip-code-latitude-and-longitude/ https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/assets/us-zip-code-l... 404s Even when I worked for Medicare I couldn't get the damned post office to give us accurate zip code data! It's terrible geodata but also almost everybody remembers it and most zip codes map to one county, so it was the best UI we found for getting a general area for where a person lived.
- wombatpm 1y agoExcept when it doesn't. 60447 is in three counties in Illinois. Which causes confusion when laws/regulations are applied at a county level.
- llimllib 1y agoyeah! There are like 12 three-county zip codes, some are really fun, like places where a boat delivers the mail and goes to multiple states along the lake. And some zips don't refer to geographical areas at all, and others are military bases. It was still the best UI option despite that - if you entered a ZIP that corresponded to multiple states/counties we'd pop up a second box that asked you which you lived in, but for 99% of people it was all we needed
- ninju 1y agoBroken on Chrome 140/Windows 11 as well
- pseingatl 1y agoThe Canal Zone never had a zip code.
- madcaptenor 1y agoWhy not, seeing how it was under US control long enough to get one?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mixdup 1y agozip codes are not geographic areas, they are a collection of mail delivery points. Sometimes those points are not geographically contiguous or may overlap
- PLenz 1y agoSometimes they're entire non geographic entities like the IRS
- mulmen 1y agoOr moving areas like aircraft carriers.
- PLenz 1y agoThe military postal code system is seperate from the US post office's zip code system. Often (and easily!) conflated but actually operating in parallel. Made even more confusing because many U.S. based entities can be reached in both systems.
- mulmen 1y agoNeat! The military postal codes look like ZIP9s, is that a coincidence or is that just the interface with the USPS?
- paulsmith 1y agoThis is a fact of ZIP Codes that a lot of people stumble one. I've worked on GIS/mapping projects in the past where stakeholders wanted or assumed ZIP Codes to be polygons. Another complexity that surprises folks is you can't guarantee a one-to-many state-to-ZIP Code relationship. There are several (I forgot offhand how many, I used to have them memorized) that span across state boundaries.
- y-c-o-m-b 1y agoYep, this fact eluded me earlier in the year. I was supposed to map out all ZIP codes in the US and color their boundaries based on certain stats we had. We were surprised to find many areas in the US were empty because they didn't have ZIP codes. I did a quick search and found out ZIP codes are driven by mail routes, and that instantly made sense to me, but the product stakeholders were very surprised to learn it.
- mlsu 1y agoThis just places a dot on top of the centroid(?) of the zip code. Would be better with a shaded area for each zip. Still cool!
- nostrademons 1y agoYou can get that on Google Maps by searching for [XXXXX zip code].
- dhosek 1y agoAs noted elsewhere in the discussion, not all zip codes are polygons. Some are lines or points.
- cogman10 1y agoIf you find this interesting and you haven't watched it, Go watch "The hidden pattern in post codes" [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5oDtVAYzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5oDtVAYzk
- pseudosavant 1y agoFor those that may be interested, this is my project to easily get a list of every zipcode + city/state combo. It is available as JSON you can easily directly work with, or even try a service like this: https://usps-zip-codes.deno.dev/90210 https://usps-zip-codes.deno.dev/90210. I have a pet peeve for having to enter my zip code after I've already had to type in the city and state. There wasn't any easily downloadable file that had every ZIP code though. I keep hoping more sites will ask for ZIP first and then just auto fill it using data like this. /wishfulthinking https://github.com/pseudosavant/usps-zip-codes https://github.com/pseudosavant/usps-zip-codes
- jayknight 1y agoIt doesn't contain my zipcode/city combination. My zip code spans across a city line, and the json file only has the OTHER city in it.
- pseudosavant 1y agoFor what it is worth, this is the ZIP code data as according to the USPS. The scripts simply create the JSON file for you by calling the USPS API for every zip code between 00000 and 99999 (plenty of holes in there) and recording the response if there is one.
- dfxm12 1y agoI have a pet peeve for having to enter my zip code after I've already had to type in the city and state. What else would you expect? Typing my zip is way easier than going through a list of zipcodes in a dropdown, many of which will be off by one digit in different spots. (ETA: I reread your comment and see what you are expecting) I like the experience of autocomplete while I'm typing out my street address.
- boilerupnc 1y agoI think the sentiment for the pet peeve is commentary on the perceived inefficient sequence of the data input and a hope for reducing the number of fields entered from 3 to 1. >I have a pet peeve for having to enter my zip code AFTER I've already had to type in the city and state. The city and state can be derived from the zipcode - so why not simply ask for the zipcode to be typed and then auto-populate the associated city and state.
- arealaccount 1y agoheh Melber, KY
- dfxm12 1y agonice
- weinzierl 1y agoThere are more beautiful ones: https://www.printmag.com/designer-interviews/paula-scher-maps/ https://www.printmag.com/designer-interviews/paula-scher-map...
- cramcgrab 1y agoIt would be nice if the usps would get out of mail delivery and focus on email. Wouldn’t mind a usps email account
- helle253 1y agoyou've seen this old article, right? https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-usps-email/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-usps-email/ as the son of a (former) mailman, i would have loved an @usps.com email
- floatrock 1y agoTo make this more than "this is just the xkcd population map joke" https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ , better title could be "Distribution Search of Zip Codes in the United States". Point here is to type 0, 1, 2, etc. in the search box to see how zip codes with that prefix are geographically distributed. I read an interesting story where this distribution comes from the manual mail sorting days... before computer sorting, postal workers could read the first digit and drop it into one of 10 boxes based on what part of the country it was going to, and so on for each additional digit. Other countries have said "ah f it, it's all computers these days anyways, lets just make all addresses arbitrary random codes with no correlation between code distance and geographic distance. A database lookup at computer speed is a database lookup no matter what."
- danielvaughn 1y agoInteresting (and also somewhat expected) that it acts as a fairly accurate proxy for population density.
- bdn_ 1y agoZIP codes are such interesting identifiers. Their intended use was for facilitating more efficient mail sorting, they were not for providing any sort of human-friendly location data. Yet we still end up using them in so many parts of our lives for identity verification, navigation, population statistics, ... They remind me of Social Security numbers in a way, where an identifier created for one narrow use (internal Social Security use only) ended up becoming a de facto standard (national identification number) due to the absense of a suitable alternative. If you'd like to go further down the ZIP code rabbit hole, a few interesting codes to research are `00501`, `48222`, and `12345`. :)
- SnoJohn 1y ago10048
- dylan604 1y agoThe classic 90210
- sib 1y agoI find it interesting that we use them to represent areas while they were only intended to represent routes... And this relates to why there are some ZIP codes that are in multiple states.
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y agoPhysical routes tend to end in contiguous areas. It's rather difficult to teleport a mail delivery truck.
- layman51 1y agoIs there really no ZIP code that is non-contiguous? I think it might depend on the visualization provided by services, but it looks like on Google Maps, searching for "92014" seems to generate borders around two areas that look like there is no contact between them.
- chuckreynolds 1y agoGoing to date myself a bit here but way back in the day (early 2000's ish) we had to pay a LOT of money to get a zipcode database lol. Early ecomm and site builds sometimes needed em and man was the data rough. This is cool but just took me down memory lane a bit.
- QQQQQQQQQQQQQM 1y agoThis map lists Portsmouth, NH as having the zip code 00210 - 00215, which... aren't valid zip codes. It does also show Portsmouth with the correct zip of 03801 - 03804. I wonder how that happened, and if there are any other weird errors? Honestly this is exactly the outcome I had wanted when I started smacking in codes starting with 000, then 001, and 002 actually had a little blip stayed highlighted so I investigated further.
- cptskippy 1y agoIt also has errors with the locations of ZIP Codes. 92018 is on the coast but it's shown as near Ramona CA. 92010 doesn't exist.
- tomasphan 1y agoI did not find this map very useful but interesting as a visual reference. Here is one with zip code boundaries on a map: https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/ https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/
- aanet 1y agoThis is so cool! Clicking 0 - 9 one by one, we can see how the zip codes traverse from extreme north-east to the west. Fab visualization.
- tiltowait 1y ago0-3 is pretty interesting for how strongly you can see the outlines of some individual states. This becomes less and less clear as the numbers go higher.
- Leftium 1y agoThought it was going to be this (from 17 years ago): - https://www.benfry.com/zipdecode/ https://www.benfry.com/zipdecode/ - https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/446666 https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/446666 Of course, the results are pretty similar. --- Another interesting ZIP code visualization: https://eagereyes.org/zipscribble-maps/united-states https://eagereyes.org/zipscribble-maps/united-states
- 0xTJ 1y agoI'd be very interested in a version of this for Canadian postal code, which have the form K1A 0B1, alternating letters and digits. The first letter is either a province or 1/2 territories, or for Ontario and Quebec is a portion of the province or a metro area. (Vancouver could reasonably be offended at not getting its own first letter.) Santa Claus's postal code H0H 0H0 would be read as being in the Montreal area (starting with an H), but being rural (second character is a 0). H0 is an almost completely empty prefix, except for an indigenous reserve.
- technothrasher 1y agoHmm, so I entered 31337 and it said it was Lenox, GA. But 31337 is not a valid zip code. Lenox, GA is 31637.
- cheschire 1y agoThat’s an elite observation
- Dave_Rosenthal 1y agoNeat visualization. There is a street performer in my town that has them all memorized (and many international zip codes as well) and makes a fun show of it, asking people what zip code they are from and putting them on a map. Sometimes it takes him a second to recall the exact town name but he always knows instantly what city they are close to, helped no doubt by the locality of the mapping. Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSFt38IS0QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSFt38IS0QU