(Detailed PDF Map)
Source: adapted from aerotropolis.comKey Aerotropolis DevelopmentsAir transportation
conveys more people
and goods faster, farther than ever before. As a result, new urban
forms are taking place around airports to form a cluster of
activities related to passenger and cargo flows. Depending upon how this
cluster of airport-centric activities is integrated (with many
related to logistics), the terms "airport city" or "aerotropolis"
can be applied.
Airport city. An expansion of the
conventional role of airports as mere transshipment locations
for passengers and freight into a range of added value
activities, particularly since air traffic has increased
substantially across the world. This expansion is the outcome of
the convergence of several commercial trends, including the need
for airport authorities to find additional sources of income as
airports are competing with other airports to attract scheduled
passenger and cargo services. This is expanded by the growing
integration of several economic sectors, especially high
technology, with air transportation, which incites the search
for affordable locations in the vicinity of airport terminals.
Aerotropolis. In simplistic terms, an
aerotropolis includes all the elements of an airport city, but
in a more comprehensively planned framework. This framework
includes a set of concentric rings of specific activities around
the airport, starting with an inner zone of distribution centers, logistics complexes,
and just-in-time manufacturers, then a ring of office parks, hotels,
restaurants, and convention centers, and then still farther out a largely
residential periphery home to those who make their livelihood
in the aerotropolis. Cutting across all these rings are aerolanes, high
capacity highways and rail lines providing access from ring to ring
and to the rest of the metropolitan area within which an aerotropolis
is set.
Airport cities and aerotropolis are competing at a global level,
which commonly implies that their economy tends to be
more linked to global process than regional ones. Dubai may one of be the best illustration of an aerotropolis planned from
the ground up, but several Asian airports are also nuclei
for this kind of development and even in the US and Europe a few examples
can be found, including Dallas-Fort Worth International and Schiphol
in Amsterdam. Several developing countries are advocating the
development of aerotropolis around new airport projects or as a
strategy to expand existing airport facilities to generate more
income and attract added value activities. There is no denying the new importance of air
transportation is a factor shaping the urban landscape and that is nowhere more in evidence than in and around
the world's large airports.
