The quiet financialisation of urban infrastructure. The media in the normalisation of airport-led development in the Paris city-region

Airport management companies are increasingly reconfiguring cities through their engagement in non-aeronautical property developments (e.g., hotels, business parks, logistics zones, conference centres, etc.). These development strategies are instrumental to the diversification and financialisation of the companies' activities. They raise key issues for the public debate on cities as they have important economic, social, environmental and political consequences for metropolitan growth and change, regarding land clearance, urban sprawl, and the socio-economic prioritisation of the areas under development. This paper examines the way the press addresses these issues in public debate. Drawing upon a case study of Aéroports de Paris (ADP), the company owning and managing airports in Paris city-region, this article analyses media reports spanning the period from 1990 to 2024. It shows that ADP's financialisation-driven property strategy and its increasing role in the development of the Paris region is rarely questioned by the press. Media coverage struggles to address the processes at stake, and thus limit their understanding by the readership and the questioning of the urban model to which they contribute. Our results highlight that the news media tend to naturalise the market-driven diversification of airport firms and their growing role and impact in metropolitan peripheries. • Airport managers increasingly pursue market-led property development. • Media coverage normalises their growing role in urban production. • This post-political framing is linked to profound shifts in the media industry. • Media-airport entanglements further bias reporting. • Airport land strategies require greater attention from journalists and researchers.