Regional market definition

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
schema: foundry-doc-v1
title: "Regional market definition"
slug: regional-market-definition
short_description: "Spatial containers on the location intelligence map — how settlements with co-location presence differ from Regional Markets, and why coverage is not market strength."
short_description: "Spatial containers on the location intelligence map — how coverage differs from a qualified Regional Market, and why coverage alone is not a market-strength claim."
category: markets
index_group: coverage-methodology
type: concept
@@ -13,88 +13,47 @@ audience: customer-woodfine
bcsc_class: public-disclosure-safe
language: en
language_protocol: PROSE-TOPIC
last_edited: 2026-08-26
last_edited: 2026-09-07
editor: pointsav-engineering
paired_with: markets/regional-market-definition.es.md
cites: []
---

The Woodfine location intelligence map organises co-location clusters into two spatial containers. The **settlement with co-location presence** is a coverage statistic; the **Regional Market** is a tighter object reserved for settlements with meaningful concentrations of co-located retail. A third, coarser container — the **Metro Market** — provides context at the major-metropolitan level. This article defines each object, states the rule that produces it, and distinguishes between what each count measures and what it does not.
The Woodfine location intelligence map distinguishes two spatial containers for a settlement with retail co-location activity. A settlement enters the **coverage layer** the moment one co-location cluster falls inside its boundary. It becomes a **Regional Market** only once its clusters clear the platform's anchor-composition gates. A third, coarser container — the **Metro Market** — places each Regional Market in its metropolitan context. The distinction matters because coverage measures how widely the platform's tracked retail chains have been observed; it does not measure where retail demand concentrates.

## The two objects currently called Regional Markets
## Settlement with co-location presence

The pipeline resolves each co-location cluster to an incorporated municipal or CSD polygon via a point-in-polygon assignment against TIGER 2023 places for the US, GISCO LAU 2021 plus GADM GBR for the EU and UK, with rural co-locations resolving to their containing municipality. A settlement becomes a Regional Market object the moment **one** co-location falls inside its polygon.
A settlement with co-location presence is any incorporated municipal or CSD polygon containing at least one co-location cluster, assigned by point-in-polygon match against TIGER 2023 boundaries in the United States and GISCO LAU 2021 plus GADM GBR boundaries in the European Union and United Kingdom. As of the most recent processing run, **12,689 settlements across 24 countries** carry this coverage flag; **12,578** of them — about 99% — carry the high-confidence geocoding flag.

Under this permissive rule, the count of Regional Market objects approximates the count of distinct settlements that contain any co-location at all. At the 2026-05-22 build, the pipeline produced approximately **3,011 settlements** (North America and EU/UK) with co-location presence. Of those, **2,986** were published in the live dataset and **2,942** carried the high-confidence geocoding flag.
This is a coverage statistic. It records how widely the platform's tracked anchor chains have been observed, not where retail demand concentrates: a town with a single qualifying co-location and a metropolitan area with dozens both clear this floor on the same terms. Geocoding confidence measures the precision of the boundary assignment, not the strength of the underlying market, and is not treated as a quality signal anywhere on the platform.

Coverage has grown substantially since that build. As of the most recent full processing run (2026-08-06), the live dataset carries **12,689** Regional Market objects across **24 countries**. Of those, **12,578** — about 99% — carry the high-confidence flag. The permissive rule itself is unchanged; the growth reflects dataset expansion, not a floor change.
## Regional Market

That is a coverage statistic. It records how widely the tracked anchor chains are observed. It does not identify where retail demand actually concentrates. A floor of one co-location admits every town with a single qualifying co-location on exactly the same terms as a metropolitan area with dozens.
A Regional Market is a settlement whose co-location clusters clear the platform's anchor-composition gates — the same compositional logic applied to individual clusters under the [[co-location-tier-system|tier system]], assessed at the settlement level. Each continent draws its qualifying pool from every settlement that clears the gates — 1,121 settlements across three countries in North America, 650 across fifteen countries in Europe. [[about-regional-markets-system|Regional Markets Intelligence System]] documents the full qualification method.

## The distinction: coverage versus market
The distinction from raw coverage is deliberate: a single-anchor settlement clears the coverage floor without carrying the anchor diversity a Regional Market requires. The composition gate, not settlement count, is what determines whether a name appears on the platform's Regional Markets tables.

Two failure modes follow from conflating coverage with market:
## The Top 400 — a qualifying set, not a ranking

**Single-anchor settlements dominate the population.** A town with one qualifying co-location is, under the current rule, the same object class as a metro holding many. The label "Regional Market" implies concentrated retail demand; the rule admits the single-anchor case. The headline count is therefore inflated by exactly the cases that carry the least decision value for site selection or investment.

**The count reads as an artefact of the floor, not the geography.** A reviewer can move the count up or down simply by arguing the floor, which is the classic sign that the threshold — not the data — is doing the work. This is the same failure class as the clustering parameter sensitivity documented in [[catchment-ranking-methodology|the catchment ranking methodology]], where parameter sweeps move the North American cluster count across a wide range without any change to the underlying retailer data.

The geocoding-confidence field does not resolve this. It is geocoding precision — specifically the quality of the boundary assignment — not market quality. It must not be presented as a ranking or a quality signal.

## Composition floors: anchor composition, not count

**A count-based floor — a minimum *number* of co-locations within a polygon — is not the right fix.** A settlement can clear a count floor of one and still be a genuinely strong market, if its single co-location cluster is itself a convergence of multiple independent anchor categories — a hypermarket, a hardware retailer, and a warehouse club within one tight cluster is already a T1 by the tier system's own definition (see [[about-regional-markets-system|Regional Markets Intelligence System]]), and a T1 is exactly the concentrated-demand signal the term "market" is supposed to carry. Conversely, a settlement that clears a count floor of two by holding two separate, single-anchor (T3) clusters is not obviously stronger than the single-T1 case a count floor would exclude. Counting *how many* co-location events a settlement has and counting *how strong* each one is are different questions, and only the second one is what "Regional Market" should mean. Composition — the anchor-category mix *within* a cluster — is already captured correctly by the T1/T2/T3 tier classification; a floor built on cluster count instead of cluster tier repeats the exact coverage-versus-market conflation described above.

The object split below still holds. A permissive coverage catalog is a legitimate, honestly-labelled thing to publish, separate from a claim about market strength. But the tighter object's floor should be tier-based (e.g., "contains at least one T1 cluster"), not count-based.

### Settlement with co-location presence

- **Definition.** Any incorporated municipal or CSD polygon that contains at least one co-location.
- **Count.** 12,689 as of the most recent full processing run (2026-08-06; NA plus EU/UK). Stated as a coverage statistic with the honest gloss: *"12,689 settlements across 24 countries contain at least one observed co-location, as of the most recent full processing run."*
- **Role.** Coverage map, footprint claim, and the base set from which the tighter object is drawn. Not the headline market count.

### Regional Market

A settlement is promoted to Regional Market when its co-location clusters clear a stated **tier-based** floor, not a count floor. For example: "contains at least one T1 cluster." This ties the term to cluster *strength* rather than cluster *count*. It correctly admits the single-strong-cluster case and correctly excludes the many-weak-clusters case that a count floor would get backwards.

An alternative, and analytically stronger, floor is a **demand threshold**. Under this approach a Regional Market clears a stated catchment population or estimated annual spend threshold, tying the term to demand rather than supply density. This depends on the catchment and spend surfaces being trustworthy first (see [[trade-area-methodology|the trade-area methodology]] and [[spend-population-provenance|the spend and population provenance]] write-ups). Adoption is appropriate once those surfaces carry their uncertainty framing.

Whichever floor is chosen, **the resulting Regional Market count must be re-derived and published alongside the floor and the rule that produced it**. The count is not meaningful without both printed next to it.

If no floor is adopted, the minimum acceptable change is renaming. That means dropping "Regional Market" for the permissive object and calling it "settlements with co-location presence" on the map face, in the platform's documentation, and in this TOPIC. The term "market" carries an implied claim of concentrated demand that the one-co-location rule does not support on its own. Per the correction above, though, a single co-location *can* support that claim if its tier is high enough.

## The Top-400 co-locations — a qualifying set, not a ranking

The Top-400 is a list of co-locations, not Regional Markets, produced per region. North America is one region; Europe (UK, Nordics, Continental) is another; the list is cut at 400 per region. Each row carries a Regional Market column for context. It is the spine of the platform's detail view, presented in a fixed order that is not an asserted rank.

**No rank or score is published against any co-location in the Top-400.** Entry is decided by anchor composition, not by a numeric score: a co-location qualifies when it clears one of three composition gates — a hypermarket anchor with at least two of {hardware, price club, lifestyle, electronics, sport}; a hypermarket-plus-hardware anchor pair across at least two distinct clusters; or that same hypermarket-plus-hardware condition applied to a geographically isolated co-location. A composite score exists internally to support selection but is never surfaced to a reader. See [[about-regional-markets-system|Regional Markets Intelligence System]] for the full qualification method.
Publication is capped at 400 markets per continent, presented in a fixed, alphabetical order that carries no rank. Every published market has already cleared the anchor-composition gates described above. Where a continent's qualifying pool exceeds 400, the markets with the strongest anchor composition are published — 400 of 1,121 in North America, 400 of 650 in Europe. A composite score exists internally to support that selection but is not published and carries no bearing on how a market is described on this wiki. The published lists are at [[atlas-top-400-north-america]] and [[atlas-top-400-europe]].

## Metro Market

The Metro Market is a coarser, contextual container: a major metropolitan area on a published reference list (US MSA/CBSA, Canadian CMA). A Regional Market nests inside at most one Metro Market and is never dissolved into it. Metro Market is context only — it is never the co-location or ring zoom level and never a breadcrumb level. Raising the Regional Market floor does not affect the Metro Market layer.

## What does not change

The boundary resolution rule is not altered by any floor change: Sherwood Park resolves to its containing polygon (Strathcona County) under the uniform "one rule, no exceptions" boundary policy confirmed 2026-05-22. A prior settlement-specific geocoding override for that settlement was removed and is not reinstated.

One wiki TOPIC per Regional Market remains the article unit, with a section per co-location inside it. Raising the Regional Market floor reduces the number of stub TOPICs, since single-anchor settlements no longer generate a thin market article. That is a content-quality improvement.
The Metro Market is a coarser, contextual container: a major metropolitan area on a published reference list (US MSA/CBSA, Canadian CMA). A Regional Market nests inside at most one Metro Market and is never dissolved into it. Metro Market is context only — it is never a co-location or ring zoom level, and never a breadcrumb level in its own right.

## Counts stated honestly
## Boundary resolution

Every count below is reported with the rule that produced it. Figures are as of the most recent build referenced in the artifact registry and must be re-derived whenever the floor or the boundary set changes.
Boundary resolution follows one rule with no settlement-specific exceptions. A co-location near Sherwood Park, Alberta resolves to its containing polygon, Strathcona County, on the same terms as any other settlement.

| Object | Rule | Count | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Settlements with co-location presence | ≥1 co-location in polygon | ~3,011 (NA + EU/UK, 2026-05-22 build) | Coverage and footprint |
| Regional Markets (tier-based floor, corrected recommendation) | ≥1 T1 cluster | To be re-derived on adoption | Concentrated co-location, correctly admitting single-strong-cluster markets |
| Published RM objects (gateway, 2026-05-30 build) | Permissive rule (≥1 co-location), unchanged | 4,436 (2026-05-30 build, 18 countries — see [[about-regional-markets-system|Regional Markets Intelligence System]]) | Coverage; grown by dataset expansion, not by a floor change |
| Published RM objects (gateway, most recent full processing run) | Permissive rule (≥1 co-location), unchanged | 12,689 (2026-08-06 build, 24 countries) | Coverage; grown by dataset expansion, not by a floor change |
| Top-400 co-locations (per region) | Composition gates (internal score, not published) | 400 NA + 400 EU | Qualifying candidate sites, not a ranked list; adopted per the recommendation above |
## Counts

Two honesty notes belong in the platform's documentation alongside this table:
| Object | Definition | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Settlements with co-location presence | At least one co-location cluster inside the settlement's polygon | 12,689 across 24 countries |
| Regional Markets — North America | Cleared the anchor-composition gates; published as the strongest 400 of a 1,121-market qualifying pool | 400 |
| Regional Markets — Europe | Cleared the anchor-composition gates; published as the strongest 400 of a 650-market qualifying pool | 400 |

- The Regional Market count under a tier-based floor will differ from the raw settlement count in both directions — it drops many weak, low-tier settlements but keeps every single-cluster T1 settlement a naive count floor would have excluded. Neither direction is a regression; a tier-based count is simply a different, more defensible measurement than either the raw coverage count or a count-based floor.
- The geocoding-confidence field is geocoding precision, not market quality, and is not a ranking variable.
*Regional Market figures from the 2026-08-07 dataset build. Coverage-layer figures (settlements with co-location presence) from the 2026-08-06 processing run.*

## See also