zlacker

>>voxada+(OP)
ZIP codes are an emergent property of the mail delivery system. While the author might consider this a bad thing, this makes them "good enough" on multiple axes in practice. They tend to be:

- Well-known (everybody knows their zip code)

- Easily extracted (they're part of every address, no geocoding required)

- Uniform-enough (not perfect, but in most cases close)

- Granular-enough

- Contiguous-enough by travel time

Notably, the alternatives the author proposes all fail on one or more of these:

- Census units: almost nobody knows what census tract they live in, and it can be non-trivial to map from address to tract

- Spatial cells: uneven distribution of population, and arbitrary division of space (boundaries pass right through buildings), and definitely nobody knows what S2 or H3 cell they live in.

- Address: this option doesn't even make sense. Yes, you can geocode addresses, but you still need to aggregate by something.

>>jonas2+Xd
In terms of "good enough", a Canadian postal code, broadly equivalent to a zip code, is much more granular and can often identify an individual apartment building, or single city block. Plenty of large office buildings in major Canadian cities also have their own postal code.

The functionality of it is closer to the "Zip+4" with extension used to have a more granular routing of physical mail for USPS.

https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/support/articl...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada

>>walrus+5t
> In terms of "good enough", a Canadian postal code, broadly equivalent to a zip code, is much more granular and can often identify an individual apartment building, or single city block.

To the point that StatCan and other agencies have rules on the number of characters that are collected/disseminated with other data to make sure it's not too identifying:

* https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-governmen...

* https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/ref/DQ-QD/guide_2-e...