Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next

by John D. Kasarda, Greg Lindsay

From Dubai to Amsterdam, Memphis to South Korea, a new phenomenon is reshaping the way we live and transforming the way we do the aerotropolis. A combination of giant airport, planned city, shipping facility and business hub, the aerotropolis will be at the heart of the next phase of globalization. Drawing on a decade's worth of cutting-edge research, John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay offer a visionary look at how the metropolis of the future will bring us together - and how, in our globalized, 'flat' world, connecting people and goods is still as important as digital communication. Airport cities will change the face of our physical world and the nature of global enterprise. "Aerotropolis" shows us how to make the most of this unparalleled opportunity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Urban, Cities, Economics, Business

480 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the 3 star book I'd actually recommend to read, despite some profound disagreements with the book and its premise.

First, the style. It's portrayed as co-authored, but it's actually Greg Lindsay writing from the first person. John Kasarda is spoken of in hushed tones as the guru and quoted at length. That's weird.

The basic premise is that the organizing principle of the economy and cities going forward will be airports and it's either build a great one and organize your city around it or perish. This at times reads like Tom Friedman with whirlwind tours of the developing world and hyperbolic discussions of the growth happening there (Dubai! Bangkok! Bangalore! Pearl Delta! Seoul!).

In America, we hear gushing about Memphis (FedEx) and Louisville (UPS) and hear how bad LAX and O'Hare are. We learn how all the valuable commodities come in air cargo and everyone will be flying, and lots of business world mumble like "bleeding edge" and "moving up the smiley curve."

This is interesting, but I have grave doubts. I remain completely unconvinced that China is going to take over the world under its current model of massive, top-down government enterprise. Revolution is going to spin that country out of control if the one-child demographics don't. Pollution and land grabbing create barriers. Dubai and Abu Dhabi cannot both be giant metropolises sixty miles away doing the same thing forever. India is corrupt and in shambles. That Memphis has a bunch of low-skill sorting jobs and is an ugly sprawling mess whereas Chicago and Los Angeles are high-skill job centers doesn't convince me that Memphis got it right by being FedEx's shipping point.

Moreover, those who fly a lot or even some (like me) would hardly call it this amazing experience. Airports are either close to town and gridlocked or out on the periphery like Denver and add an hour to the trip to get there. Security and delays mean that it is often not pleasant to fly, and the idea that people really will commute in large numbers every day from one city to the other is laughable--there is just too much transit time lost in every trip. The people who do that for real fly privately out of small airports for exorbitant rates--something the book misses completely.

Lindsay at times tries to be self-critical, but can't muster that much pronounced concentration at it. The environmental question in particular seems half-baked. On other points, he writes like there is a clear answer but then seems to realize once the practical discussion starts that it's not so clear. Does China's dictatorship which means infrastructure projects can be done in a second really that good of a system in the long run? Would Chicago really have its future ensured by building the Peotone airport 50 miles south of the city (and thus 70-80 miles south of the wealthiest suburbs) or just create more gridlock on more roads in a new direction?

As you can tell, this book both annoyed me and was quite thought provoking. Read it yourself, but just stop and think at times whether his claims really stack up.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aerotropolis had an interesting premise, but it needed more editing to bring down the size of the book! I felt as if the author included a part of every single conversation he'd had while researching the book.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not unhappy I read this book but...it was tough staying interested. The premise - that the airport has become the central hub to our lives - makes sense. Like port cities, and then those that were connected to railroads, cities are now airport dependent. What we eat, what we buy, where we work,where we go to school, our politics and economics are all intertwined with air travel.

A few warnings. The book is badly in need of editing. The story meanders through topics and repeats itself. I think 100 pages could have disappeared without impacting the validity of the arguments. Also, the book isn't really written by John Kasarda. Its written by Greg Lindsay, using John Kasarda's experiences. That said, I think that Greg put Kasarda on too much of a pedestal - he is positioned as the all knowing expert on the "aerotropolis", and I believe (although I can't be sure) that his role in many of the projects around the world are embellished.

Again, good book, not great. Interesting topic, not ground breaking. One last note - I do think that the book demonstrates how our multi-jurisdictional democracy might be getting in the way of keeping the US competitive. No one is looking at the long term, no one being the "adult" in looking at what we need as opposed to what we want.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting concept, and while I'm certainly not sorry I read it, I was underwhelmed. I think part of it was due to the fact that the author is wedded to the notion that timely transportation = air and dismisses other forms of transportation out of hand, without really providing much evidence for why. The author is very much stuck in the current American transportation paradigm- air travel for long distances, car for short distances. Anything else is dismissed out of hand- particularly bikes and trains. (While trains get a brief look-in, they're apparently only useful for getting people to and from the airport. Despite several approving mentions of bullet trains, they are consigned to the heap of things the author has brushed under the carpet. Bikes are useless in the type of urban planning and development the author is advocating, as "you can't ride your bike to Home Depot and pick up plywood.") Sustainability is also given short shrift, despite a perfunctory mention of peak oil. But the biggest problem was that the book was too long. That wouldn't be a problem if each chapter felt fresh, but by halfway though, the book had started to feel repetitive.

[M. Nolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, "Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next" offers a broad overview of how air travel and shipping are shaping international trade, urban form, and our sense of identity/community. From Louisville to Dubai to Nairobi to Shenzhen - with the obligatory trip to Detroit mixed in - Lindsay charts the development of a true "Jet Age," one designed to compliment the instant connectivity of the internet, and the cities that are rising from its embrace. Whether you're interested in economics, business, or urban theory, this one is worth checking out. Two small gripes: First, Kasarda doesn't appear to have actually co-written this book; rather, he's a source frequently cited. That was a tad awkward, to be honest. Second, the book is fairly long, sometimes spending way too much time on issues that have already been dealt with. All in all, I can say I came out of this book knowing a lot more about the world economy.

[Dayu Sawitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book becomes an inspiration to manage airports as a trigger of city development. For some points, I agree that city grows from time to time by the effect of economic growth, so Kasarda mentioned that speed, agility, and connectivity were the basic keys for urban development (that actually all seen from economic eye). The problem is, urban development is often being pushed by the business and the needs for supporting airport without realize that most of the new airport is build in sub urban area. As we know, sub urban area has it's own character that often becomes lack of identity because of the efficiency needs. This book will gives us some knowledge about the future of airport development phenomenon but aware to always make a wise decision from another factors to plan or develop the city.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh yes. This is a brilliant book. It is controversial, counterintuitive and most importantly makes an argument. It is so inspiring to find a book that is prepared to make a case and mobilize an argument. Even though I am still considering many variables in their argument - particularly regarding sustainability - this monograph probes a future for cities, capitalism and globalization. First class. They may not be right, but they are right to describe what happens when an airport, city and economic hub collide.

And to correct GoodReads, the authors are John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book everyone should read. The co-author, Greg Lindsay, builds on John Karsarda's theories of the aerotropolis in a series of chapters reminiscent of John McPhee. Instead of being subtitled "The Way We'll Live Next" it could just as easily be subtitled "Why Everything You Think About Airports, Greener Living and Globalization Is Wrong." Every chapter had concepts that surprised me. I highly recommend it.

[Witek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very annoying for the first few dozens of pages, where it feels like you're being hammered over and over with the supposed awesomeness of the author's idea. Once the book turns to some startling examples of what globalisation has done to worldwide supply chains it starts to get interesting. Still, it's not written as well as it should be and I do believe that the book is way too long for something that's supposed to get just one idea across.

[Colin · Rating 2 out of 5]

100% purchased this book because of the cover. (Also found out that my favorite used bookstore has an architecture and urban design section, so there goes my money.) Anyway, this book views urban planning solely from an economic and capitalist lens. Justifies massive carbon emissions from air travel using a toddler’s argument: “Those practices emit more CO2 anyway!”

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense, but a great overview of the intense macro economic global impacts of airports. Wish a bit more time was spent on the human scale opportunities of the aerotropolis as an urban city.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is invigorating and annoying in equal measure, which is a shame, as it's one of the most thought provoking looks at our future that I've read.The central thrust of the argument is that future cities will grow up around airports in the same way that they did around rivers, canals, railways and roads. This has a lot of social implications for the way we will lead our lives - or at least the way some of us will lead our lives. And this is where the annoyance begins. The poor? Forget them. If they can't afford to fly they are not worthy of consideration, except that maybe we can employ them to sell us burgers at the airport. The environment? Don't worry about that, we'll soon have invented airplanes that fly on water. Or something.
Although social implications are mentioned a lot, they aren't really examined deeply. For example, when half of Asia starts boarding 'planes to fly West, what is likely to happen? What are they coming for? Just business? Just sightseeing? The author dismisses the current eighty thousand rural protests a year in China in half a sentence. The attitude seems to be, "Just give them an airport and they'll be happy as they can go shopping in New York." But if there 's one thing humans want more than stuff, it's freedom, freedom to watch unlimited porn, or worship Jedi Knights, or blast their brains with cheap booze, or gorge themselves sick on junk food. The world envies America not for its affluence, but for the ability to dream that one day you could have it ALL and that nothing is stopping you. What's the point of jumping on that brand spanking new China Airlines Airbus A380 from New York home to Guangzhou to get arrested at customs for having a copy of Asian Babes in your suitcase, and never seeing your family again for twenty years?
It seems to me that this book was written by engineers for engineers. People are units, pretty much. But here is where the other annoyance came in. People are units, except when they are heroes, changing the way we live with their visionary dreams. The author has an irritating habit of highlighting sole individuals to underpin his argument, along the lines of, "Have you used an iPhone today, an iPad, read a Kindle, cooked with a microwave, watched your flat screen TV through a satellite box while waiting for a call through your Bluetooth headset? If so, then you can thank Fred Buckwad for all of this". One guy gets the following accolade: "Picture Steve Jobs advising Obama: that's Victor Fung". If ever there was an argument NOT to meet someone, surely that is it? It's the same annoying and sloppy habit that says Henry Ford invented the car, that the Wright Brothers invented flying or that Tim Berners Lee invented the internet. Okay, you can usually live with such generalisations, but the sheer number of them in this book began to seriously bug me. The cult of the individual - maybe if airlines treated you more like an individual yourself, you'd be prone to take more flights. And this, for me, was one of the major weaknesses in the book - we don't all want to fly twice a week, we really don't. It's such a rotten experience, unless you can go business, that I find myself actively avoiding long haul these days. I mean, what am I going to find in America, Australia, Tokyo, wherever? Increasingly the same food, the same shops, the same BBC World on TV, the same hotel chains, mix of people and so on. You might as well stay at home really. Wouldn't this be the ultimate irony? That airports change the world so much that they make it increasingly the same and trigger their own obsolescence? Maybe there's a book in that?

[Keegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I occasionally make forays into the world of nonfiction, but rarely do I venture into the world of economics. I don't get business. At all. So books about business capture my attention about as well as teen vampire romances.

To be fair, I sort of stumbled into this book by way of a discount table at my local Waterstones. At the time, I was flying a lot and had fallen in love with Up in the Air<\i>, a movie about airports and flying. A few years later, I again found myself flying a lot, so the book was brought back to mind. It seems, as the title suggests, that this frequent flying is going to be the way I (or we, really) will live in the future. So, flying to San Diego, I tossed the book in my bag, and off I went.

The book was fascinating, all told, and written in a clear, engaging style that managed to hook a complete neophyte to the world of business. More than that, my politics tend to veer left, but it found many of his free-market arguments compelling. The central claim is that all business, and in turn cities, are going to want a frictionless mode of transportation if they are going to compete globally. In order to bring business (and jobs) to the region, a company will have to determine where on the supply chain it sits, and what airport offers the greatest advantages for that business model. The author looked at cities like Dubai and countries like China to see how they build smarter airports to facilitate the needs of business. Often times, this requires a more free-market approach.

Interestingly, he was critical of this approach, and notes that it could cause some issues, like urban sprawl and inflated real estate markets (which, as we know, can collapse economies). He argued that the markets should certainly drive the development of the aerotropolis, or the airport city, but that it needed to be carefully planned, and by extension regulated, to prevent societal problems. He examined a few cases - Detroit, Memphis, LA, Heathrow, and my hometown Chicago - in which improperly planned airports can lead to massive headaches. He argued that a careful public/private partnership is necessary for the aerotropolis to work.

It's a compelling argument, not only for the airports but for any type of global society. That was the strength of the book.

It had one smallish issue: it based the central thesis on the research of one dude which have not actually come to fruition. Theoretically, he believes this how a city should work, and there is a lot of evidence to support that not doing the theory will cause problems. I would have liked to see one city that was working well AND followed John Kasarda's blueprint. Granted, Kasarda has tried to get cities to follow along, and someone usually botches the deal. Still, it all looks good on paper and makes for an interesting thought experiment. I just wonder if that is all it will ever be: a political or social thought experiment like those by Marx or Locke.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The topic sounded interesting to me but in my opinion it was very poorly written. The introduction takes up about 20 pages (much too long for an intro to me) and basically could be the whole book. That was somewhat interesting, albiet long, and I gave Chapter 1 a chance. I couldn't make it through though because of the writing. To me, it was somewhat all over the place with no clear thesis (even after the intro, the main themes of the book were all over the place). I think the writer, speaking for the idea-man behind the book John Kasarda, did him a great disservice with this book. I thought, maybe it's the topic? I haven't read many books about airports and air travel in general after all. Maybe the topic just did not interest me after all? But my answer to that is no, because I've read plenty of other books that had a topic I didn't know anything about at first and I loved. A book like this should inform those like us that know nothing of the topic; it is persuasive non-fiction after all. It didn't persuade me :(

[DoctorM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really not sure what to make of this. Kasarda has one idea here--- that aerodromes will become the heart of 21st-c. cities, that the aerodrome and associated shipping hubs will make us all nodes in a global web. Given the fall in per-ton transport costs over the last two centuries, it's hard not to argue that transport points are in fact the keys to any city's integration into the wider world. And yet... Kasarda wants to make this the One Big Idea of urban planning into the 21st-c. in the way that planners 90 years ago wanted to see everything about cities as part of a Machine For Living. Never mind that Kasarda seems not to grasp just how deep the issue of sustainability cuts here, or that he's not clear about what to do with a century's worth of sunk capital or several centuries' worth of cultural and political formations. Not every city is Abu Dhabi, despot-created in the middle of a literal desert, and "Aerotropolis" never quite understands about the weight of the past...or the fuel costs of the future.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So interesting...a long, detailed rumination on the way that cities are becoming (and MUST become) increasingly developed on the basis of their access to airports. It's much more complex and nuanced than that, with a combo of urban development, history, politics, economics/finance, and crystal ball gazing. If you travel a lot for business, and/or find the commercial aviation industry interesting, and/or are curious about the future of the global economy, this will be interesting to at least skim, if not to read every word.

[R · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like several other people here I came to this book with high expectations. They were quickly dashed. The bizarre, gushing introduction where Lindsay reveals he is the sole author and John Kasarda his guru was bad enough. Then I read this review by Will Self in the London Review of Books and couldn't take it seriously any longer.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n09/will-sel...

[February Four · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really not sure I buy this. They talk about the rise, rise, rise, but stop just before they explore the possible fall (even though they hint loudly at possible huge failures ahead) and then extrapolate to "prove" that everything is going to turn up roses. The book is sadly out of date in 2014, though, so perhaps the intervening 3 years since publication (and possibly a couple of years before that, to include final research and the road through a publisher) is showing.

[Melissa Cavanaugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had potential but really needed a good editor. The chapters about American cities got repetitive after a while; it picked up again once the story went international, but even then there were sections where the author forgot that just because something happened to him didn't mean it was interesting.

[Doc Vinh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book about how airports will be the main hub for cities and their creation. I learned that China is investing heavily in their infrastructure while we sit around and complain about crappy roads.

[Vivek Agarwal · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book with some historical and economic basis of discussions. I like the fact that the author bases his arguments and shows me the new age and the future. However I somehow don't agree that if large airports are built then business will come.

[Jason King · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lesson on corporate greed and exploitation of land and social values. It's all about winning, but avoids the question about those that get left behind. I'm looking forward to reading how this seemingly ideal urban model will be sustained in the coming decades.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great non-fiction futuristic read about how cities SHOULD be constructed. Airport are the focal point and city layout is circular. Also talks about modern day shipping processes and how UPS & FedEx operate. Great read.

[Austin Boatwright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seriously considered pursuing my MBA at UNC because of John Kasarda.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A futuristic if not utopian vision of cities that embrace and build around airports rather than fleeing in endless urban sprawl.

[Kalle Wescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read.

[Jgoggin · Rating 4 out of 5]

His style is a bit corny, but it's full of lots of great insights. Fascinating study!

[Adam]

______
Saw author (Greg Lindsay) on documentary 'Mankind from Space' (2015).