C 2?equivalence-. But when the underlying linear scheme is?C 3, Navayazdani and Yu have shown that to guarantee C 3?equivalence, a certain tensor P f associated to f must vanish. They also show that P f C k ?proximity conditions-which are known to be sufficient for C k ?equivalence. In the present paper, a geometric interpretation of the tensor P f is given. Associated to the retraction map f is a torsion-free affine connection, which in turn defines an exponential map. The condition P f =0 is shown to be equivalent to the condition that f agrees with the exponential map of the connection up to the third order. In particular, when f is the exponential map of a connection, one recovers the original connection and P f vanishes. It then follows that the condition P f =0 is satisfied by a wider class of manifolds than was previously known. Under the additional assumption that the subdivision rule satisfies a time-symmetry, it is shown that the vanishing of P f implies that the C 4?proximity conditions hold, thus guaranteeing C 4?equivalence. Finally, the analysis in the paper shows that for k?, the C k ?proximity conditions imply vanishing curvature. This suggests that vanishing curvature of the connection associated to f is likely to be a necessary condition for C k equivalence for k?." />