Introduction

I created a USA Zip Code shapefile that can be used in Tableau, Alteryx or other programs that read shapefiles. This article is simply meant to share the files I used and created and to document the original data sources.

I cannot promise that the final product is of perfect quality. From what I have read, getting zip codes perfectly represented is not an easy thing to do. I give the data sources I used to help anyone track issues that they may discover with this file.

Background

I had found zip_code_database a couple of years ago and have used it for a number of projects. Now that Tableau uses shapefiles so brilliantly, I decided to use Alteryx to blend the zip code database with a zip code shapefile that I downloaded from here.

The reason I did this has to do with the utility of such a file. The raw zip code shapefile is empty by itself. It only has polygonal boundaries for each zip code. That might be helpful for geospatial operations, but it doesn’t help us much when doing BI studies. The primary weakness of that file is that there is no state information in the file. I did the data joining operation in Alteryx to make a much more useful shapefile.

The resulting Zip_Code_Polygons in shapefile format should be useful for a lot of purposes. As shown in Figure 1, I had Alteryx add some goodies like zip code areas, perimeter lengths, centroids, etc. There are also fields included from the database including time zones, major cities, etc. I cannot vouch for the complete accuracy of this information, but it has served me well in the times I have used it. There seems to be some funkiness in the time zones, but I’m not too worried about that, so use it at your own discretion.

Figure 1- The Alteryx data joining operation used to create the zip code shapefile. The two original files can also be downloaded in this article.

The Zip Codes Rendered in Tableau

Click here to download the Tableau 10.4 (twbx) file (you must rename the *.zip to *.twbx) of this information. The shapefile has been imported and an extract was created for this data.

Figures 2 through 5 are some renderings of this data and Tableau 10.4 absolutely crushes these drawings. There is almost no time delay in rendering the 33,000+ zip code polygons. Maybe I should throw this file at Power BI and do some comparisons!

Figure 2- The contiguous 48 USA Zip codes.

Figure 3 – The time zones colored by zip codes.

Figure 4 – The zip codes of the northeastern US.

Figure 5 – New York City and surrounding area zip codes.