Airport city — an urban design question

Airports are of particular significance for contemporary cities. They are not just places where airplanes take off and land, but also hubs where locality combines with globality. The transport hubs have always played an important role in city development. Harbors, railway stations or major crossroads were the locations of intense contacts, it was here that settlement structures developed. As privileged locations, they attracted investments and became economic growth centres. A similar phenomenon can be observed for airports. As the number of the transported passengers and goods grows, the terminals develop additional functions. Airport-proximate zones are prestigious sites with good traffic connections. Investment accumulation based on the snow-ball effect results in creating new building complexes, called Airport City. Those are sites where the flow of people, goods and capital takes place and which are the focal points of the urbanization processes in the global economy. But can the Airport City be compared to a city as a shopping gallery to a gallery or an industrial park to a park? Can urban space be created there and if so, what type of city is it