Location intelligence co-location archetypes

The Location Intelligence platform identifies retail and commercial gravity through three co-location archetypes: Retail Centres (PRO), Urban Fringe (VWH), and Commuter (PKS). Each archetype describes a distinct clustering pattern that reflects a different type of commercial activity and a different relationship to the surrounding urban geography.

The three-letter codes were ratified on 1 June 2026.

The three archetypes

PRO is the base map product — the foundation of the site-selection dataset. VWH and PKS are overlay archetypes that identify adjacent market structures not captured by grocery-anchored clustering.

PRO — Retail Centres

PRO clusters represent grocery-anchored commercial co-locations at three scales. The pipeline groups anchor-category retail locations that fall within a defined span distance, then assigns each group to one of three tiers based on anchor composition.

Tier definitions

T1 — Regional: A cluster containing a grocery hypermarket and a hardware retailer, plus at least one of a price club, lifestyle retailer, or electronics retailer. Alternatively: four or more anchor-category retailers in a tight cluster, or three or more anchors in any tight cluster.

T2 — District: A cluster containing a grocery hypermarket and a hardware retailer, within a wider district-level span.

T3 — Local: All remaining anchor pairs that do not qualify for T1 or T2.

Current dataset

The current production dataset spans thousands of PRO clusters across all three tiers, covering 17 display countries across North America and Europe. Tier boundaries are periodically re-tuned as the underlying retail footprint changes; the T2 district radius has been tightened in successive rebuilds relative to earlier phases.

VWH — Urban Fringe

VWH clusters identify concentrations of hardware and industrial-supply retailers in the absence of grocery anchors. These sites occupy the urban fringe — a band of distance beyond the immediate metro core but short of standalone-market territory — and tend to cluster around highway interchanges in areas with adjacent industrial landuse.

Definition

A VWH candidate is a location where one or more hardware retailers are present, no grocery hypermarket is within the cluster span, and the site sits within the Urban Fringe metro-distance band. The typical built form is a multi-storey warehouse or light-manufacturing building, distinct from the one-storey big-box format of the retail park.

VWH locations serve trades contractors, light-manufacturing operators, and just-in-time logistics tenants — not general retail consumers.

Co-location signals

Essential:

Significant:

Disqualifying: Dense residential immediately adjacent; flood plain; heritage conservation zone; location inside a PRO cluster.

Production status

The VWH pipeline is production-grade. Hardware stores were profiled as proxy anchors, and the trade-supply clustering was validated against held-out hardware-anchor data, with an internally set acceptance threshold for cluster quality that the production build clears.

The dataset spans thousands of clusters across the 17 display countries, concentrated most heavily in the United States with meaningful coverage across several other North American and European markets.

Clusters are distributed across the three tiers in the expected shape: a small minority reach the Full Trade Hub tier, a larger share reach the Established tier, and the majority sit in the Emerging/Thin tier. That T3-heavy distribution is expected — a full trade hub combining MRO, tool rental, builders merchant, and auto parts is a legitimately rare combination.

A quality-control flag marks clusters that sit close enough to a grocery hypermarket to be considered dual-use commercial parks — valid VWH co-locations that also include grocery retail.

PKS — Commuter

PKS clusters identify commercial concentrations near regional airports and intercity train stations that sit in a Commuter belt beyond the immediate metro core but short of standalone-market distance. The defining demand pattern is park-and-fly or park-and-train travel: residents of a Regional Market drive to a transit node, park, and travel to the Metro Market.

Definition

A PKS candidate is a regional transit node — airport or intercity train station — within the Commuter metro-distance band. Nodes closer than that band are classified as suburban rather than regional; nodes beyond it are considered standalone markets with a separate metro relationship.

The defining commercial signal at a PKS location is car rental. Auto parts, fuel stations, quick-service restaurants, and convenience stores are secondary signals.

Co-location signals

Essential:

Significant:

Disqualifying: Major hub within the immediate metro core; population below a minimum viable threshold; no direct metro service.

Production status

The PKS pipeline is production-grade. Park-and-ride records serve as the primary geographic anchor — actual car-to-transit transition points distributed independently of rail network geometry. Transit modes are enrichment signals; car rental and hotel presence define commercial maturity. Related transit-mode categories are grouped together before tiering, to prevent related modes from inflating an apparent multi-modal signal.

Clusters are distributed across three tiers. A Regional Hub tier combines multi-modal access with a full commercial ecosystem. A Transit Interchange tier combines transit with at least one commercial signal. A larger Transit Node tier is where transit is present but commercial opportunity remains to be proven out.

Commercial enrichment draws on major car rental and hotel chains active in each market, ingested and reflected in the production build.

Major hub filter

Airports adjacent to a major PRO retail cluster are excluded as likely major commercial hubs. Major airports generate their own retail gravity and do not exhibit the park-and-transit pattern. The filter correctly removes hubs such as LAX, JFK, LHR, and CDG.

Future enhancements

• Airport passenger volume data (CAPA or IATA) to replace the current adjacency-based hub proxy with a direct traffic-based classifier
• Parking operator directory: Q-Park, APCOA, NCP, Indigo/Vinci (EU); SP+ (US)

Map integration

VWH and PKS appear as overlay layers under the ★ Regional Markets section in the layer control panel.

VWH toggle — displays orange dots at Urban Fringe candidate locations. When active, cluster bubbles fade to reduce visual interference.

PKS toggle — displays teal dots at integrated candidates (near a PRO T1/T2 cluster) and grey dots at standalone candidates. The same bubble fade applies.

Both layers persist across view transitions — the fade state is maintained when switching between the Retail View and the BentoBox market detail panel.

See also

• Co-location Methodology — the anchor-composition scoring that drives PRO tier assignment
• Co-location Ranking System — the five-rank commercial density index that ranks PRO clusters
• Regional Markets Intelligence System — the 400-market ranking built on PRO cluster data
• Top 400 Regional Markets — North America — ranked list of suburban-regional PRO markets in NA
• Top 400 Regional Markets — Europe — ranked list of suburban-regional PRO markets in EU
• O-D Catchment Methodology — how catchment zones are measured around each cluster centroid

Data Sources

Map and location data © OpenStreetMap contributors / ODbL.