Locational analysis: highlights of growth to maturity

Locational analysis has grown to maturity over the last decades, from its earliest roots, to fruitfulness in a wide-ranging number of strands that join with other disciplines and applications such as environmental planning and supply chain management. This paper charts the progress of location theory in three stages: a period of early contributions, when a number of seminal geometrical and geographical problems were studied; a ‘coming of age’ with the development of defining or classical problems that have proved fundamental to much later research and a third period of new models and new applications.