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Rise of the Aerotropolis
fastcompany.com — As competition shrinks the globe, the world is building giant airport-cities. They look monstrous to American eyes--and that could be a problem.
bharaths7- 3 diggs
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- hyperfnord, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Incredibly interesting. This is in stark contrast to my own personal views of cities being human-sized, but I love reading this kind of article. Well-thought out. These kinds of business/economy-driven cities are incredible and awesome. But, I wonder, how can these cities possibly run properly with PEOPLE? These mega aero-cities seem better suited to robots. What kind of urban developments will they contain, to make them livable, tolerable, not certain to drive an average human insane, or create such an insular environment as to nullify individuality? The idea of "local" will dissapear, as will the notion of "home." Would these spaces be urban, suburban, or pig-farm? Perhaps it would be better that if rather than one huge city, it would be a tightly knit area of many small self-contained cities in Jane Jacob's human scale (like, for example, most areas of London). And the idea of it creating jobs for women, merchants - etc, well... what kind of jobs? Kasarda might have an optimistic, almost utopian idea of how well the aero-city will suit everyone, but in real life things are much more messy than that.
As someone working in industry, however, the idea of such huge windows for shipping is attractive. Right now, we have to get stuff out the door by 5pm, and have a rather limited province-wide reach. In an aero city, the deadline would be probably midnight, and easy access to business the world over. Competition would be fierce but that is a HUGE opening for more profits.
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