Airport Cities
(O'hare International interior photo from Fact Monster at http://www.factmonster.com/us/history/ohare-international-airport.htmll airport photo by Carol M. Highsmith) In a recent issue of Time Magazine (17 March 2011), Pico Iyer , the author of the book The Global Soul which is about airports and movement, claims that airports will become the primary focus/node of cities. He states,” The days when we built our airports around cities now seem distant; in the new, mobile century, we build our cities around airports.” While this seems novel to Mr. Iyer, it is not. Transportation nodes have always been the center for cities: key junctures along land routes, ports, river terminals, highway junctions and railroad stations. I am familiar with this topic as my dissertation concerned the land use impacts of airports. Based on my dissertation and other more recent research about cities and globalization, I would like to clarify that an airport’s influence as a nodal attractor for land...