Trade Area Analysis on a Budget: PostGIS, Census Data, and Drive-Time Isochrones

Retail site selection consultants charge thousands of dollars for trade area reports. The underlying work is a drive-time polygon overlaid with census demographics, with competitor locations plotted on top. All of it is reproducible with PostGIS, free government data, and open commercial data from Overture Maps. I&rsquo;ll walk through a brief analysis using Woodcroft Shopping Center in Durham, NC…