Network-based predictions of retail store commercial categories and optimal locations.

I study the spatial organization of retail commercial activities. These are organized in a network comprising "antilinks," i.e., links of negative weight. From pure location data, network analysis leads to a community structure that closely follows the commercial classification of the U.S. Department of Labor. The interaction network allows one to build a "quality" index of optimal location niches for stores, which has been empirically tested.