R53 - Public Facility Location Analysis; Public Investment and Capital StockReturn

The paper investigates how the problem of NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) related to the location of unwanted facilities is dealt in a hierarchically organized city. The conventional view of NIMBY is based on two premises: first, that locally unwanted facilities are essential to achieve an important societal benefit and realize the public good; second, that selfish opposition of local community prevents the realization of that societal good. The NIMBY effect is studied as a conflict between the City of Prague and its city districts. The official documents of the Prague City Council and of the Prague City Assembly were searched to find examples of decisions on the location of unwanted facilities. The documents search was concentrated on five selected facilities: municipal waste dumps, services for the homeless, services for drug users, regulation of gambling facilities, and the system of parking zones. In the documents, the authors identified five types of approaches to NIMBY that are called financial compensation, fair distribution, local autonomy, gradual problem shifting, and consultation/cooperation. It was observed that city districts, lower level of public administration, behave as guardians of local interests if they communicate with a higher level of public administration, a guardian of global interests. As local politicians depend on their local voters, it is not surprising that they prefer local interests to global ones. This naturally creates an internal policy conflict in the city that is divided into smaller units.

Municipalities with extended administration, in which public administration offices are located, were selected within the frame of public administration reform (Act No. 344/1997 Coll., on the Territorial Arrangement of the State and Establishment of Higher Territorial & Administrative Units). These municipalities with extended administration partly substitute the function of district authorities. The selection of municipalities was carried out on the basis of criteria set by the government and political subjects. From the point of view of citizens, the most important criterion for the dislocation of public administration branch offices is the transport availability. Nevertheless, transport availability was not paid relevant attention in the decision making process in question. This fact becomes more and more important in connection with the growing problems related to ensuring regional transport. The paper deals with the creation of a mathematical model of the optimisation of branch offices dislocation and subsequent implementation. The solution of this model has three outputs. The first output is the evaluation of the contemporary state from the point of view of accessibility of branch offices. The second one is the sensibility analysis of accessibility depending on the number of branch offices. The third output is the post-optimisation analysis, which brought about numerical expression of the relationship between the cost of running a branch office and losses due to citizens travelling to municipalities with extended administration.