In some examples, policy-based application architecture generation may include generating, based on a knowledge model schema, data residency policies, and a data classification ontology, a knowledge model, and determining, based on the knowledge model, whether an application includes regulated data. Based on an analysis of application data and user data, user location and regulated data insights may be generated to determine location specific data residency policies. Location specific regulated data in-flow and data source hosted location insights may be analyzed to determine a location compliance assessment that includes an indication of whether a location associated with the application is compliant or not compliant with the location specific data residency policies. Based on an indication of non-compliance, a strategy may be generated for compliance of application architecture for the application with the location specific data residency policies, and re-architecting of the application architecture may be implemented.