By Celeste M. Hammond and Virginia M. Harding
Everyone knows that location matters when selecting a site to develop or purchase a home. But what a good location is means different things at different points in time. Over the years, the attributes that make a location good or desirable have changed.
People cannot survive without water. A site without a reliable supply of fresh water was not a site where people could settle and start a town. Since ancient times, people have settled on the banks of rivers because the river not only provided a supply of water but they also were trade routes. Settlements along rivers are the settlements that often flourished and grew into major cities. Examples of such settlements include Cairo located on the Nile, London on the Thames and Paris on the Seine.