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<\/p>\nMajor airports have become key nodes in global production and enterprise systems offering them speed, agility, and connectivity. They are also powerful engines of local economic development, attracting aviation-linked businesses of all types to their environs. These include, among others, time-sensitive manufacturing and distribution facilities, such as aerospace, biopharma, electronics, and e-commerce; hotel, entertainment, retail, convention, trade and exhibition complexes; and office buildings that house air-travel intensive executives and professionals.<\/p>\n
The rapid expansion of airport-linked commercial facilities is making today’s air gateways anchors of 21st-century metropolitan development where distant travelers and locals alike can conduct business, exchange knowledge, shop, eat, sleep, and be entertained without going more than fifteen minutes from the airport. This functional and spatial evolution is transforming many city airports into airport cities.<\/p>\n
As more and more aviation-oriented businesses are being drawn to airport cities and along transportation corridors radiating from them, a new urban form is emerging \u2014 the Aerotropolis \u2014 stretching up to 20 miles (30 kilometers) outward from some airports. Analogous in shape to the traditional metropolis made up of a central city and its rings of commuter-linked suburbs, the Aerotropolis consists of an airport city and outlying corridors and clusters of aviation-linked businesses and associated residential development that feed off each other and their accessibility to the airport. A number of these clusters such as Amsterdam Zuidas, Las Colinas, Texas, and South Korea\u2019s Songdo International Business District have become globally significant airport edge- cities representing planned postmodern urban mega-development in the age of the Aerotropolis. These airport edge cities and other significant aerotropolis commercial nodes are reorienting the metropolitan center as they attract substantial concentrations of business functions previously confined to central city downtowns.<\/p>\n
A spatially compressed model of the Aerotropolis showing its current and likely future evolution is illustrated below. No Aerotropolis will look exactly like this but most will eventually take on similar features, led by newer “greenfield” airports on metropolitan peripheries less constrained by decades of prior surrounding development. The Aerotropolis is therefore much more of a dynamic, forward-looking model than a static, cross-sectional model that often reflects historic airport area development before air commerce played such an important economic role. It is likewise more than corridors and clusters of aviation-dependent commercial, industrial, and logistics facilities. The aerotropolis also encompasses living urban places that must be designed as appealing environmental and social realms if the model is to achieve its full potential. Since economic sustainability is a prerequisite for development success, the aerotropolis must further be planned and administered to appeal to the business logic of investors, commercial real estate developers, and their facility end-users.<\/p>\n
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Thus, the Aerotropolis model is not simply a commercial land-use framework. It is, in fact, an integrated planning and development strategy that brings together and reconciles 1) the business site and profitability objectives of firms making capital investments, 2) airport and surface transportation objectives of ensuring maximal access to the airport and to local and distant business sites at lowest possible time and cost, and 3) urban planning objectives of livability, environmental sustainability, and social vibrancy.<\/p>\n
Although much aerotropolis development to date has been organic \u2014 often lacking urban amenities and spawning congestion and environmental problems \u2014 in the future, it can be markedly improved through strategic infrastructure, business site, and urban planning and design. A selection of theoretical, applied, and design principles of the Aerotropolis strategy and model are listed below:<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that aerotropolis development and \u201csmart urban growth\u201d that is economically and technologically efficient as well as environment-, resident-, visitor-, and worker-friendly can and should go hand in hand. The same can be said for improving matches between new aerotropolis businesses and endogenous airport-area workforces and economies through upgrading local labor force skills and developing community projects and services that appeal to air travelers.<\/p>\n
There are immense challenges, of course, to implementing an integrated aerotropolis strategy that will accomplish such outcomes along with others noted in the bullet points above. Yet, these outcomes will not likely occur under most current airport-area planning approaches, which tend to be localized, politically and functionally fragmented, and often conflicted. A more comprehensive approach is required integrating airport planning, urban and regional planning, and business-site planning domains in a synergistic manner so that future aerotropolis development will be more economically efficient, aesthetically pleasing, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable. The real question is not whether aerotropolises will evolve around major airports (for they surely will). It is whether they will form and grow in an intelligent manner, minimizing problems and bringing about the greatest returns to the airport, its users, businesses, surrounding communities, and the larger region it serves.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at yesterday\u2019s busiest train terminals and you will find today\u2019s great urban centers. Look at today\u2019s busiest airports and you will find great urban centers of tomorrow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John D. Kasarda<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 20th century was about cities building airports. The 21st century will be about airports building cities.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John D. Kasarda<\/p>\n
\u201cAirport cities confined to airport property should be architecturally designed and themed to reflect place; managed to maximize benefits to their users, investors, and the surrounding region; and supported by an appropriate business model to be profitable.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John D. Kasarda<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Aerotropolis consists of a multimodal airport-based commercial core (Airport City) and outlying corridors and clusters of aviation-linked businesses and associated mixed-use commercial\/residential developments that feed off of each other and their accessibility to the airport.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John D. Kasarda<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Aerotropolis is also a strategy representing a set of coordinated infrastructure, commercial real estate, and government policy interventions that 1) upgrade airport-area urban and employment assets, 2) reduce ground-based transport times and costs, and 3) expand air route connectivity to attract investment, create jobs, and boost aviation-generated trade in high-value goods and business services.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John D. Kasarda<\/p>\n
“The true challenge is planning to get the Aerotropolis right. If there is not appropriate planning, airport-area development will be spontaneous, haphazard, economically inefficient, and ultimately unsustainable. The aerotropolis model brings together airport planning, urban and regional planning, and business-site planning to create a new urban form that is highly competitive, attractive, and sustainable.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n