Nintendo just plonked them down anywhere without regards of where.
Don't complain to loudly about that, pretty soon it might start luring people to the local McDonalds...
https://consumerist.com/2016/07/13/is-pokemon-go-partnering-with-mcdonalds/
Possible code in the game to turn every Mickey D's into a gym. Golden Arch gym badge anyone?
Oh, companies are scrambling to get their location listed.
I saw a conversation on Twitter today with William Gibson about how it might impact the value of your house.
As he put it:
Next up: Augmented Realty, the cyberspace associated with your real estate
Pokestops and gyms are based off of landmarks and places where people are known to congregate. Niantec's previous game, Ingress, is basically the same thing sans Pokemon and they use the map data from it to determine things in Pokemon go. Players in Ingress could create sites but that's not possible anymore.
William Gibson