Hi,
Not sure if this is still current, but some thoughts...
My inital thoughts relates to long/lat, but I then read your difficulties with this. So in that vain, have you come across the Haversine Formula (I hadn't) but this may help. You take a FULL list of zip codes and use this/ perhaps combined with some alternative API's to remove zip codes from the full list that fall into the same unique area. This may give you a more manageable list, but without tryiing it, I have no idea.
Some links that you may have/have not seen:
http://mcdc.missouri.edu/allabout/zipcodes.html
https://www.zipcodeapi.com/
In particular -> Find Close Zip Codes (https://www.zipcodeapi.com/API#matchClose ) (50 free requests/hour)
The API can take a list of zip codes and match together those that are within a specified distance of each other.
Sounds like a interesting conundrum. Even Quora has been asking this
https://www.quora.com/Geolocation-What-i...entire-USA
But I may be covering the same ground as you.
Bass
PS I have just seen this blog, it seems to generate a single number to relate to the geography by combining L&Lat. This may be able to let you feed in all the zip codes and extract those that are 'unique'
http://mitchelsellers.com/blogs/2012/01/...erver.aspx
Not sure if this is still current, but some thoughts...
My inital thoughts relates to long/lat, but I then read your difficulties with this. So in that vain, have you come across the Haversine Formula (I hadn't) but this may help. You take a FULL list of zip codes and use this/ perhaps combined with some alternative API's to remove zip codes from the full list that fall into the same unique area. This may give you a more manageable list, but without tryiing it, I have no idea.
Some links that you may have/have not seen:
http://mcdc.missouri.edu/allabout/zipcodes.html
https://www.zipcodeapi.com/
In particular -> Find Close Zip Codes (https://www.zipcodeapi.com/API#matchClose ) (50 free requests/hour)
The API can take a list of zip codes and match together those that are within a specified distance of each other.
Sounds like a interesting conundrum. Even Quora has been asking this
https://www.quora.com/Geolocation-What-i...entire-USA
But I may be covering the same ground as you.
Bass
PS I have just seen this blog, it seems to generate a single number to relate to the geography by combining L&Lat. This may be able to let you feed in all the zip codes and extract those that are 'unique'
http://mitchelsellers.com/blogs/2012/01/...erver.aspx
