Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

As the importance of housing welfare has recently increased, the metropolitan government of Seoul has established and operated the housing support center. However, the current locations of housing support centers are typically determined for administrative convenience, which could lead to poor access for concerning households as housing demand. On the other hand, while it is important for public facilities to efficiently provide the service with as many people as possible given the limited resources, it is also very important to choose locations that consider spatial equity providing equal service to everywhere. From this kind of standpoint, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of current locations of housing support centers in Seoul, and to suggest the optimal location of housing support center for concerning households taking into account both spatial efficiency and equity. To do this, we utilize the regionally constrained P-median problem (RCPMP) which considers the equal number of locations over region for public facilities in an efficient way. The analytical results for this research are expected to be utilized as useful basic information when the locations of housing support centers should be replaced, or if additional housing support centers should be established.