zctas {tigris}

Download a Zip Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) shapefile into R

Description

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) are generalized areal representations of United States Postal Service (USPS) ZIP Code service areas. Please see the link provided for information on how the Census Bureau creates ZCTAs, and for important information on the differences between ZCTAs and ZIP Codes.

Usage

zctas(cb = FALSE, starts_with = NULL, year = NULL, state = NULL, ...)

Arguments

cb

If cb is set to TRUE, download a generalized (1:500k) ZCTA file. Defaults to FALSE (the most detailed TIGER/Line file). A warning: the detailed TIGER/Line ZCTA file is massive (around 502MB unzipped), and the generalized version is also large (64MB zipped). Be prepared for this especially if you have a slower internet connection.

starts_with

Character vector specifying the beginning digits of the ZCTAs you want to return. For example, supplying the argument starts_with = c("75", "76") will return only those ZCTAs that begin with 75 or 76. Defaults to NULL, which will return all ZCTAs in the US.

year

the data year; defaults to 2022

state

the state for which you are requesting data; only available for 2000 (TIGER/Line and CB shapefiles) and 2010 (TIGER/Line shapefiles only)

...

arguments to be passed to internal function load_tiger, which is not exported. See Additional Arguments.

Additional Arguments

Additional arguments that can be passed in ... are:

• class Desired class of return object: "sf" (the default) or "sp". sp classes should be considered deprecated as of tigris version 2.0, but legacy support is still available.

• progress_bar If set to FALSE, do not display download progress bar (helpful for R Markdown documents). Defaults to TRUE.

• keep_zipped_shapefile If set to TRUE, do not delete zipped shapefile (stored in temporary directory or TIGRIS_CACHE_DIR depending on the configuration of global option "tigris_use_cache"). Defaults to FALSE.

• refresh Whether to re-download cached shapefiles (TRUE or FALSE) . The default is either FALSE or the value of global option "tigris_refresh" if it is set. Specifying this argument will override the behavior set in "tigris_refresh" global option.

• filter_by Geometry used to filter the output returned by the function. Can be an sf object, an object of class bbox, or a length-4 vector of format c(xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax) that can be converted to a bbox. Geometries that intersect the input to filter_by will be returned.

See Also

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/zctas.html

Other general area functions: block_groups(), blocks(), counties(), county_subdivisions(), places(), pumas(), school_districts(), states(), tracts()

Examples

## Not run: 
# Example: get ZCTAs that intersect the Memphis, TN urbanized area

library(tigris)
zcta1 <- zctas(cb = TRUE, starts_with = c("37", "38", "72"))

uas <- urban_areas()

memphis_ua <- uas[grep("Memphis", uas$NAME10), ]

mem_zcta <- zcta1[memphis_ua, ]

plot(mem_zcta$geometry)


## End(Not run)