The Right Place: Shared Responsibility and the Location of Public Facilities

Public facilities provide important goods and services which contribute to and enhance the quality of life. The search for appropriate locations for these facilities attracts attention from academics, politicians, bureaucrats and the general public. The process by which locations are selected is therefore one of collective choice drawing together technical information on aspects such as needs assessment, performance measurement and estimates of environmental, social and economic impacts. Of equal importance are the attitudes preferences and perceptions of the decision makers, managers and end users.
The Right Place provides a critical review of contemporary approaches used to address locational issues and problems of public facilities; such facilities include noxious waste dumps, recycling depots and power stations, as well as more welcome schools, hospitals and parks. Fundamental concepts such as choice, consensus and accountability which underlie the search process are identified and discussed, and the author highlights the important relationships between public facilities, welfare and planning to provide an introduction to the book. Throughout the text the concept of shared responsibility provides a framework for drawing together the diverse range of literature used in this study.
Findings from the social sciences and appropriate areas of operational research are used to investigate and discuss how the siting of public facilities can be improved in terms of service productivity and efficiency while still addressing the requirements of equity and economy. The author looks at the style of regulatory government that is emerging and its effect on the decision making process and discusses in some detail the impact of information technology on the planning process and political and bureaucratic procedures. This technology includes computer-based decision support systems and multi-criteria decision aid models; several of these are discussed in detail.
The Right Place will aid readers to identify the fundamental principles and approaches relating to complex locational problems and will assist them to develop procedures that will minimize planning errors. Case studies, drawn from a variety of countries, are used to illustrate the arguments.
The Right Place is written for senior undergraduates and postgraduate students in colleges, universities and polytechnics with an interest in planning, public policy and administration and political science. It will prove to be a valuable reference source for planners involved with waste management, highway engineering and social services and members of the regulatory agencies and government bodies who deal with the location of public facilities.