“There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location."
Think back to third grade. Was there a U.S. map in your classroom, maybe with state lines and capitals? Now imagine other versions of that map you have seen. Topographical, with miniature Appalachian and Rocky mountains. Satellite maps showing dense green forests in the east, deserts in the west. And you’ve probably seen colored geological maps of the U.S., which look a little like bad finger paintings.
Regardless of complexity, any map with data represented on it falls into the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) discipline, and we all have become so used to seeing GIS maps in the media we almost never stop to think about how they’re created. They all start with true underlying geography and connect the spatial world to related information like climate, terrain, or geology, and to less-inherently related information like politics, health, economics or defense.
Fast forward to today’s age of big data and big computing, and GIS can take the form of deep micro-location analysis, yielding granular insights into real estate utilization and value. Recent research explored the potential of this methodology, studying the performance of retail assets in a single small British city between 2010 and 2023.1
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