A new M.I.T. graduate course: Analysis of urban service systems

This paper summarizes a new graduate course focusing on an area of very recent quantitative research: urban service systems (e.g., police and fire departments, emergency ambulance services, mass transit systems). At one level the course presents a unified study of geometrical probability, multiserver queuing theory, spatial location theory, scheduling and sequencing techniques, and relevant methods of simulation. At a second level students are asked to structure a comprehensive quantitative approach to a set of problems actually experienced by one agency, entailing interaction with the agency. This paper reviews the course as taught in the 1971 Spring Term and discusses applications in evaluating various types of urban technology.