Instant cities and the aerotropolis

Ever heard of Songdo? It’s an “instant city”, commissioned in 2001 and built off the coast of South Korea it opened for business in 2009. The fully planned city built on reclaimed land, is set around a 100 acre park, features a university, business district, schools and other amenities, all connected by a comprehensive communication network based on fibre optics, and an underground railway. The whole city is connected to Incheon International airport by a magnificent 21km bridge which was opened to traffic in 2009.

Songdo is one of a growing number of instant cities, designed for our low energy-use, high technology use future. It is also an “aerotropolis” – another trend – in which airports are pulled into the heart of cities rather than flung further and further from them. In this vision of the future, all the main roads and “air trains” lead to airport terminals, providing superfast connections to the business districts and residential neighbourhoods.

In his book, Aerotropolis: The way we’ll live next , author Greg Lindsay says: “Whether we consider it to be good or simply inevitable, the global village holds these truths to be self-evident: that customers on the far side of the world may matter more than those next door; that costs must continually be wrung from every piece of every business in a market-share war of all against all; and that we must pledge our allegiance if we want our iPhones, Amazon orders, fatty tuna, Lipitor and Valentine’s Day roses at our door’s tomorrow morning.”

There is another reason cities might embrace such a future: jobs. As the journalist Thomas P.M. Barnett explains in The New Rules: Globalization, Air Hubs and the City of Tomorrow : “At first blush, it’s easy to be repulsed. Who wants the noise and the architectural “charm” of the hotels, office buildings and warehouses that congregate around such transportation hubs? The simplest answer is jobs. What rules in today’s globalised economy is accessibility and speed and modern airports are its fastest connection points – the physical embodiment of our increasingly e-commerce-driven world. Yes, most trade still goes by sea but already one-third of its value travels by air. The value of air cargo has grown more than four times faster than global trade over the past several decades.”

Barnett notes that there are half a million jobs within a five mile radius of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, 400,000 jobs near the Dallas/Fort Worth airport and 200,000 jobs around the Dulles International airport in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. Airports themselves are big employers and Barnett argues that cities that have not upgraded or built airports have suffered in economic terms.

In Melbourne, the fastest growing areas are between the city and its airport. The effort to redirect passengers to Avalon airport is to be (finally) supported with a $250 million very fast train line.

In Sydney, the decision not to put the third runway far away from the city centre looks like it a smart one, from an economic point of view, despite the congestion and the noise for residents.

It’s not my idea of a palatable future but if it turns out to be the way we go, I make a simple plea: let our instant aerotropoli be beautiful designed by our friends the architects, who love nothing more than to solve an impossible design problem, such as shielding residents from noise. I direct you to this one, The Castle, by HVDN Architects, where the whole building is encased in glass to keep out the noise of the railways it is built next to but cleverly allows for fresh air to flow into the apartments though tiny, vertical inlets over the face of the building.

Do you agree? Write and tell me your views.

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