Planning, Sustainability and Airport-Led Urban Development

Airports are no longer places where planes just take off and land but have evolved into major business enterprises with spatial impacts and functional implications that extend deep into metropolitan areas. They are vital hubs in the global space of flows. Airport-led urban development, notwithstanding its employment and income generating capabilities and potentials, comes with costs and risks: economic, environmental, and cultural. A host of planning issues are raised. Traditional NIMBY reactions against airport expansion are evolving into more fundamental critiques of aviation around issues such as climate change. Mediating the conflict between the aviation industry's pro-growth stance and more sceptical perspectives is the concept of sustainable aviation. This may prove an oxymoron but it remains vital to link airport planning to the broader planning of sustainable communities and regions.