Mailing addresses and municipal boundaries (suburban, Boston, Pittsburgh, major)

[King of Kensington]

More interested here in incorporated places. How do "places" defined by the postal service differ from municipal boundaries.

For example New York City has multiple mailing address: "New York, NY" is just Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island use borough boundaries, while Queens includes Flushing, Forest Hills, Jamaica, etc.

In Los Angeles, you have Hollywood, Encino, etc.

I don't know if there's any other cities that are subdivided into different districts.

And then there are mailing addresses for major cities that spill into suburban areas, this includes Buffalo, Rochester and I believe Cleveland.

Where I live you can see a similar pattern: there are mailing addresses for Willowdale, Don Mills, Downsview, etc. - these areas are part of the amalgamated Toronto but were never incorporated. The suburban "edge cities" of Vaughan and Mississauga are broken up as well.

[flyonpa]

ZipCodes / Mailing address have no relationship to Political Boundaries .

The Only thing "Officially" the USPS does not cross with a Zipcode/office boundary is a State line.

But in Practice there are some rural address that The Box is over the state line, and get serviced by the adjoining states post office.

[King of Kensington]

Also, in Boston USPS retains Roxbury, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, etc.

[nei]

There's north London, where much of it has a Middlesex address despite the county of Middlesex being abolished almost fifty years ago.

[ckhthankgod]

Actually, in Syracuse, the 13214 zip code(DeWitt) is in a portion of the city's East Side and it isn't much different from the portion of the zip outside of city limits in terms of neighborhood character. That post office is outside of city limits too. 13214 Zip Code

[Katarina Witt]

You can use "Denver" on any address that has an "802##" and the mail will be delivered. That includes a lot of close-in suburbs on the north and west sides. You can also use the name of the town, such as Northglenn 80233 (for example).

[flyonpa]

Honestly you can put Anytown, XX ZipCode

As long as the zipcode is correct it will get to the correct post office.

[eschaton]

In Pittsburgh, certain suburbs which are all the way out at the county line (or even in a few cases just over it) still have Pittsburgh mailing addresses, which can get confusing, particularly because some real estate sites like Trulia base city searches on zip codes.

Worse, there are named zip codes in the suburbs which don't actually exist, like Warrendale, Glenshaw, Wexford, etc. People who are long-term residents tend to identify more correctly with their township or borough, but often newcomers get confused and say they are "from" the zip code name.

[Ohiogirl81]

This is pretty standard in most places I've lived.

I guess I'm not seeing the point of this thread, or how it relates to urban planning?

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

This is pretty standard in most places I've lived.

I guess I'm not seeing the point of this thread, or how it relates to urban planning?

It might be because I grew up in New England, but there, it seemed like even small towns always had their own zip code, although cities may have multiple zips.