Aerotropolis-the Evolution of the 21st Century Airport City

Traditionally, airports have been viewed as nui­sances and environmental threats that are toler­ated in order to accomplish travel purposes and shipping necessities. This thinking has essen­tially shut down new airport building in the United States and Europe. But a new concept has been articulated for the future: it is called the Aerotropolis.

Coined by John D. Kasarda, Kenan Distin­guished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneur­ship at the University of North Carolina Business School, it is a concept that is already being built in other parts of the world, like Dubai, Seoul – Inchon, and Hong Kong. The concept describes the creation of airport-linked commercial facili­ties concentrically arranged around air gateways, and consisting of time-sensitive manufacturing and distribution facilities, hotel, entertainment, retail, convention, trade and exhibition com­plexes, offices that house professionals and exec­utives, and even permanent dwellings.

While the perfect aerotropolis can only be constructed at newly or recently built facilities, utilizing urban planning and strategic infrastruc­ture, the concept can be approximated at existing airports by urban planners adapting expressway links, express trains, and the addition of special truck lanes to connect airports to major regional business and residential concentrations. While it is without question that aerotopolises will develop around existing major airports, the ques­tion is whether they will form in an intelligent manner, minimizing logistical and environmental problems so as to maximize the concept’s ben­efits to the airport, its users, businesses, and sur­rounding communities.

These results will not come about using current airport area planning and development. A new, synergistic approach is necessary to pro­duce a more economically efficient and aestheti­cally pleasing business and social community. Kasarda, in his book, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next,’1 suggests that failure to adapt to these coming certainties will spell doom for older cities. This is true, in part, due to the fact that the global network will make communities more relevant to their distant trading and business part­ners than to their own locale.

Even today airport terminals are evolving into luxurious shopping malls and artistic and rec­reational areas. Appealing to the volume of busi­ness and recreational travelers, airports have gone from offering magazine and newspaper shops to upscale restaurants, brand-name boutiques, cul­tural attractions, and high-end retail.

The concept is catching on faster in other parts of the world. Hong Kong International has 30 designer clothing shops. Singapore Changi pres­ents theaters, saunas, and a tropical butterfly forest. Frankfurt has the world’s largest airport medical clinic, seeing over 36,000 patients annually.

Large airport terminals can boast 85 million passengers passing through annually, while even large shopping malls see only 8 to 12 million people flowing through. On the landside areas of the airport, developers are adding hotel, office, conference and exhibition centers, and facili­ties for processing time-sensitive products to be shipped from the airport. Nonaeronautical activi­ties at Dallas, Atlanta, Hong Kong, and Schiphol provide some two-thirds of total airport revenues.

Forward-looking airports are changing their management approaches to include the establish­ment of commercial and real estate divisions to develop landside areas and to promote develop­ment beyond airport boundaries.

Asia is leading the world in airport city and aerotropolis development. One reason this is true is that government bodies control the develop­ment process and the financing without social or severely restrictive environmental barriers. Hong Kong International, a 2,700-acre site cre­ated from two islands and by dredging the bay bottom, and South Korea’s Inchon Airport, a 15,000-acre complex set 42 miles from Seoul, are examples. With room to expand landside development, and with high-speed rail connect­ing the aerotropolis to nearby cities, these may become the paradigm for the future.

In India, the Delhi International Airport spans 5,000 acres and is being developed with a hospitality and retail district composed of a 5-star hotel, premium apartment hotels, condo hotels, office and retail space, and a pedestrian arcade with a metro station surrounded by hotels, offices, and retail shops.

In this new world, businesses will be drawn to developing aerotropolises as multi­modal transportation and advanced communica­tions infrastructure are installed. Accessibility to global markets will drive this development, and that will depend on access to the airport and, through the airport, access to those markets.

One intriguing option that has yet to be tried, or even mentioned, is whether the constitutional eminent domain powers of municipalities, states, the federal government, and in some cases the airport authority itself, may not become a way to clear areas adjacent to existing airports by condem­nation to facilitate the concepts mentioned here.

Endnotes

1. There has been a downturn in passenger enplanements since 2007 ascribed to the global recession beginning in 2008.

2. U. S. Department of Transportation, FAA/OST Task Force, Airport Business Practices and Their Impact on Airline Competition, October 1999.

3. See pg. 214 for the history of the Airport Improvement Program.

4. PFCs were raised from $3.00 to $4.50 under AIR-21 in the year 2000.

5. With the exception of some small airports that receive subsidies from local governments.

6. This was because of long-standing constitutional prin­ciples which limited federal interference with the rights of the states and their subdivisions, as confirmed by the United States Supreme Court case of Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341 (1943).

7. Parts of this section are based on the research and writ­ings of Robert Poole, The Reason Institute, and the Cato Institute, with appreciation.

8. Title 49 United States Code section 47134.

9. OIG report discussed in Reuters, “Cost Increases, Delays Cited in FAA Programs," Washington Post June 1, 2005, p. A17.

10. McDougall, “Commercializing Air Traffic Control: Have the Reforms Worked?”, Legal Studies research Paper Series, Research Paper 09-11, Suffolk University Law School, February 17, 2009.

11. Budget of U. S. Government, Fiscal Year 2011, Appen­dix—Government Printing Office, 2010—p. 936.

12. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2011.