1. How many courses should you build in a city of 500,000 before you build one for a city of 50,000?

2. If both cities already have one course, how many more courses should you build in the city of 500,000 before you build the second course in the city of 50,000?

Pretend both cities share a budget and you are in charge of it.

The reason I ask is to refine my service levels formula. I want to pin down the value of incremental courses in an area (or additional holes on a course).

1. One
2. Two

Just wild guesses, of course. Two factors that come to mind are saturation and access.

Saturation---at what point is the number of courses too small to service a given population? Or....how large a general population can a city with a single course have, before the course is so crowded that it's hard to get on it, or at least hard to enjoy a round? I've no idea, but I suspect it's a pretty high population. Perhaps a better guess can be made based on the experience of courses that stay full.

Access---in the first example, unless it is saturated, everyone in the city of 500,000 has access to a course, but no one in the city of 50,000. Build a course for the latter.

In the second example, in a city of 50,000, it can't be too far for anyone to go to get to their course. In the city of 500,000, with the traffic involved, people across town may find themselves 30-60 minutes away from the only course, especially on weekday afternoons when traffic is heavy. 3 courses in 3 different areas of the town gives much better access to everyone.