Planning Urban Recreational Facilities with Integer Goal Programming

Urban planners are often involved in the determination of where recreational facilities (i.e. pools, gymnasia, tennis courts, etc.) should be located within the city. This problem is complicated by the planners' desire to realize certain goals in the allocation process. They desire to build only facilities for which there are sufficient construction funds and which can be operated within a predetermined budget. In addition they desire to satisfy the demands of the residents of the city for different facilities. However, these demands are often conflicting since many urban areas are somewhat segregated with the inner city being predominantly minority/lower income and the outer city consisting of white/upper income groups. These different groups enjoy different types of recreation, and, thus, demand different facilities. Since this is basically an allocation problem with multiple conflicting objectives, goal programming surfaces as an appropriate solution technique. This paper describes an integer (0-1) goal programming model for the recreational allocation problem and demonstrates its use via a case example. The model results specify the facilities which should be constructed that best meet the conflicting goals.