Determining optimum city size based on cost effective and efficient public service delivery

Abstract

This project deals with the problem that cities and/or towns in South Africa are expanding very rapidly and public services can’t keep up with this growth. The relationship between the costs and serviceable area of a service office/station are directly proportionate to each other in the sense that if you want to cover a larger area, more costs will be incurred and a larger budget is needed. A service office/station could basically cater for an infinite area if the money is available. Time (24 hours in a day) is the only real constraint. Traffic conditions and desired response time truly govern a service office/station’s serviceable area. Traffic conditions dictate the speed at which the vehicles can travel and the desired response time together with that will determine the serviceable area. To determine optimum city size was not fully realised during the project. The geographical layout and infrastructure were identified as the main variables that determine optimum city size. More study is needed to fully understand the impact of traffic conditions, desired response time, geographical layout, infrastructure, incident severity and amount of incidents on the total scope of the project.