In other words, the facilities that are available will be laid out in the best possible pattern and fashion so as to maximize efficiency and convenience for people who use the services (Handler & Mirchandani, 1979). There is obviously no way to put all of the facilities into the same space, and some of them take up more land than others, but there is no reason that urban planning officials, city leaders, and companies that want to build in a particular area cannot work together to meet everyone's needs. Often they want to accomplish this, but they simply are not sure what the best way to go about it would be.

Consider, as an example, a network model of an urbanized area, shown on the following pages and reproduced from Larson & Odoni, 1997-1999 http://web.mit.edu/urban_or_book/www/book/chapter6/6.5.2.html.

All of the nodes (a through H) indicate points at which service demands are being...
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