“I suspect that the airport will be the true city of the 21st century,” JG Ballard wrote in 1997 — 14 years on, his prediction seems more accurate than ever. Airports expand and proliferate. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest, now has a daytime population larger than the city of Orlando and an annual one that would rank it as the world’s 12th most populous nation. To John Kasarda, the prophet of the new “aerotropolis”, the city whose centre is its airport, these developments are both inevitable and desirable. The success of our urban future depends, he claims, on the emergence of ever more “aerotropoli”. His ideas, interpreted by the journalist Greg Lindsay, are thought-provoking enough but communicated with a kind of utopian zeal that is more off-putting than engaging. Kasarda and Lindsay seem to believe that they have seen the future and it works, but the rest of us may need
more persuasion than this book offers.
Aerotropolis by John D Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Kasarda and Lindsay seem to believe that they have seen the future (and it works), but the rest of us may need more persuasion