Global Business Models and Future Development Perspectives of Aerotropolis

Abstract

An aerotropolis is a new type of urban form comprising aviation-intensive businesses and related enterprises extending up to 25 km outward from the major airports. It is similar in form and function to a traditional metropolis, which contains a central city core and its commuter-linked suburbs, surrounded by clusters of aviation-related enterprises. Aerotropolises are powerful engines of local economic development, attracting air-commerce linked businesses to the land surrounding major airports, analogous to the function of central business districts in the downtown areas of major cities. Aerotropolises typically attract industries related to time-sensitive manufacturing, e-commerce fulfillment, telecommunications and logistics; hotels, retail outlets, entertainment complexes and exhibition centers; and offices for business people who travel frequently by air or engage in global commerce. Clusters of business parks, logistics parks, industrial parks, distribution centres, information technology complexes and wholesale merchandise marts located around the airport and along the transportation corridors radiating from them. An aerotropolis can also be viewed as a metropolitan sub-region whose infrastructure, land-use, and economy are centered on an airport. Similar in shape to the traditional metropolis made up of a central city commercial core and its outlying commuter-linked suburbs, the aerotropolis consists of a multimodal airport-based commercial core (Airport City) and outlying corridors and clusters of aviation-linked businesses and associated residential developments that feed off of each other and their accessibility to the airport. The paper reviews the scope and the performances of aerotropolises currently being developed as global business models in different parts of the world that are emerging as a major powerful business enterprise.