A Theoretical Model of Net Accessibility in Public Facility Location

This paper presents a model for the location of public facilities that have noxious, undesirable characteristics as well as the beneficial characteristic of providing a needed service. Everyone wants a fire station relatively near his home, but nobody wants to live next door to one. The model suggests an economic and political structure that governs these siting decisions, and is descriptive in the sense that it reproduces empirically observable siting patterns. The numerical results analyzed provide some insight into the location process. Uses are outlined for the model in the operatipnal and planning context, as well as in the area of policy analysis.