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Redefining the contours of the urban market
In 1968, geographer Torsten Hägerstrand revolutionized the way we understood geography by proposing that space was not a static surface, it was a living mesh of interactions, flows, and possibilities.
A neighborhood doesn't start or end on a black line on the map. Not a city, either.
What defines the real form of a place are not its official limits, but the desires, habits, and dynamics of those who inhabit it.
That's why we're launching something that goes beyond the obvious.
Mapfry's new feature shows urban contours more faithful to the real world:
- Flexible limits, based on market data, not only on the decrees of the Official Gazette
- Functional groupings, such as metropolitan areas and urban complexes that behave as a single socioeconomic organism
- Living neighborhoods, defined by consumption patterns, displacement, and density, and not just by vector lines inherited from the last century
What does this mean in practice
Imagine that you are analyzing the market potential of a new venture in Belo Horizonte.
Traditional maps would say that the Santo Antônio neighborhood ends at Rua Leopoldina. But flow data and consumption clusters say something else: that piece “outside” the neighborhood, in fact, is part of the same living fabric.
That's what you now see, and that others ignore.
Or think of conurbated cities, such as Jaboatão and Recife, which function as a single urban unit, but whose data are, to this day, separated by a border that only exists on paper.
Razon de ser
We're doing what we know is best for your analyses.
Replicating official limits as an extra layer leads to anti-market interpretations.
This theme explains what actually connects two areas into a single living unit.
To do this, we use:
- Clustering models based on territorial behavior
- Dynamic mobility, consumption, and digital presence data
- Spatial inference techniques that identify patterns unseen With the naked eye, but evident to those who know the pulse of the city
The truth is that maps, as we know them, do not reflect market reality
- Using an “official” neighborhood as a measure can be a mistake if your target audience moves through a real neighborhood, one that works As a neighborhood, it's not just called that
- Planning campaigns, deliveries, or territorial expansion based on fixed limits is like driving on an unmarked road.
Instead of maps of limits, maps of possibilities
This is an active research area, you will see how we intelligently redesigned territories, altering the limits that we have launched now, always seeking to better reflect the opportunities that each place offers.
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