Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next Hardcover – March 1, 2011

Q: In a few sentences, what's the central message of your book?

A: Successful cities have always been founded because of trade--from Ur to New York, these are places where people exchange goods, money and ideas. Meanwhile, the shape of cities has always been defined by transportation. Boston was built around its docks;,Chicago around the railroads, and Los Angeles around the car. And the world is poised to build literally hundreds of new cities as 3 billion urbanize over the next forty years. So where would you put a new city today? And how would a city in western China--historically the middle of nowhere--connect to the world? The answer is the airport. In a global economy, where trillions of dollars in goods and billions of people follow digital bits around the world, sooner or later we would end up building cities defined by their airports, because the only geography that matters vis economic geography. It sounds like science fiction, but it's always been this way.

Q: It seems like airports have been on people's minds lately: in movies like Up in the Air, in books like A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton, and, of course, all over the news, thanks to the A-380 Superjumbo Jet and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Was this the right time for this book?

A: The right time would have been 1962, when Eero Sarrinen's swooping TWA Flight Center was unveiled at New York's JFK and everyone was in love with the tantalizing speed jets offered. Air travel promised to change the world, and it has--albeit in ways that are so central to our daily lives they're all-but invisible to us. Today, the great wonder is one-click shopping from our iPhones, even though overnight delivery is only made possible by the enormous hubs of FedEx and UPS and nearly a thousand planes between them. Today, I listened to the CEO of FedEx lament that aviation is "taken for granted," and he's right. But it's only been in the last decade or so that air travel has really started to change the world--most of all because hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indian passengers have just begun to fly. China added the equivalent of Great Britian's air traffic during the previous decade--and they have not yet begun to fly. The world's newest frequent fliers will reshape the world--or, some worry, will destroy it.

Q: How does the vision of Aerotropolis fit in with books like Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, or Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class, which talk a lot about the free exchange and flow of goods, ideas, and people?

A: People reading Friedman get the impression--whether correctly or not--that what we call globalization started with the Internet. Really, it began with the jet. As for Richard Florida, today he talks about "megaregions"--huge groupings of cities--competing on a global basis for the best talent and opportunities. He's right. In Chicago, the outgoing mayor Richard M. Daley talks about Saó Paul and Mumbai as Chicago's closest competitors, not St. Louis and Milwaukee. And that's why Daley is desperate to expand O'Hare--because international connections are what make it a global city. That's led to the area around O'Hare becoming the second-largest business district in the Midwest, behind the Loop, and also to the Loop's resurgence as the home of the highly-paid white collar employees of the multinational firms who have set up shop in Chicago over the last 20 years. You need a good airport to both attract talent on a worldwide basis, and also to project that talent across the country or around the world.

Q: Do you think there will be a limited capacity for the new aerotropolis -- can the world handle only so many Dubais and Memphises? For example, what about cities like Wilmington, Ohio, which until recently was the hub of Airborne Express and DHL and is now looking for a buyer for the airport?

A: The future won't look like the Jetsons, that's for sure. One of the book's messages is that cities rise-and-fall, usurp dying ones and are eventually replaced by the next great ones, and that this pattern has been defined through history by trade routes and transportations. One of the reasons China, India, and the petro-states of the Persian Gulf are sinking billions into their airports, airlines and new aircraft is because they're trying to go from backwaters to global hubs practically overnight, creating a "New Silk Road" running all the way from Beijing to Johannesburg. It isn't a literal road--it's made up of air routes. And one thing about the New Silk Road is that it has nothing to do with America. It's about rewiring the global economy so that it runs through the East, not the West. That's what I mean when I describe the aerotropolis as a "weapon"--the world is in midst of what is seen as a zero-sum, winner-take-all battle to corner the market on prosperity. Many places will build one; by definition, only a few will succeed. I'm not endorsing it, but this is what it looks like on a ground when you read newspaper stories about the U.S. and China tussling over exchange rates--it's about who get to manufacture the iPad, and where, to keep those jobs.

Q: You write that aesthetics are not one of the aerotropolis's strong suits. Will people really want to live there? Or will they not have a choice?

A: Humanity is officially an urban species. More than half of all people live in cities now, whether those are downtowns, suburbs, or (increasingly) slums. According to one report I've seen, the urban footprint of Earth is expected to double in just 19 years. No matter what we build, aesthetics aren't likely to be cities' strong suits--at least not in places like the Chinese city of Chongqing, which is adding the equivalent of a Pittsburgh every year. One of the great luxuries of the 21st century will be a sense of place. The qualities of an aerotropolis being built in China — speed, efficiency, generic "world-class" architecture--are the qualities of the instant cities rising around the globe.

Q: What differentiates the aerotropolis from other commercially-centered visions of urban planning, like the suburban strip mall or Leavittown?

A: Those are examples of what you get when private developers are driving the agenda, which has been the case in American since post-WWII suburbia, at least. The places that are consciously looking to develop (or redevelop) the areas around their airports, like Detroit, or Amsterdam, or Beijing, have done a much better job about thinking regionally, about bringing public and private interests together, and trying to build something that makes sense from both an economic and urban planning standpoint, rather than just make a quick buck. A great example is Amsterdam, which built an entirely new business district called the Zuidas on its southern border with towers expressly designed for the Netherlands' largest banks and other companies, along with housing, all centered on a train station that is six minutes from the airport. It's a lot better than the alternative--exurbs lying forty miles from Phoenix, Arizona.

"The closest thing to a real-world vision to rival that of [H. G.] Wells... a mind-expanding ride that reminds us, once again, that humanity needs no apocalypse to reinvent itself." --Thomas P.M. Barnett, World Politics Review

“The days when we built our airports around cities now seem distant; in the new, mobile century, we build our cities around airports . . . Cities are becoming like airports--places to leave from more than to live in. I'd always sensed this, but it came home to me with almost shocking immediacy when I was reading the dazzling new book Aerotropolis. One of its authors, John F. Kasarda, is a business professor in North Carolina who flies from Amsterdam to Seoul preaching the gospel of building homes and businesses near airports. Co-author Greg Lindsay is a journalist who knows how to make Kasarda's research racy while raising questions about the cost of living in midair . . . Aerotropolis points out that we can still address the oldest needs but in new and liberating ways.” ―Pico Iyer, Time

“I'd wager that the notion [of the aerotropolis] is about to occupy a little more real estate in the popular imagination. This book will no doubt do for airport cities what Joel Garreau and his "Edge City" did for suburban office parks and shopping malls two decades ago: It will relocate the center . . . The prospect sketched out in Aerotropolis--while slightly thrilling, as tectonic shifts often are--feels about as dispiriting as those warehouse zones clustered near the ends of runways. And it's made all the more so by the realization that the authors are undoubtedly right.” ―Wayne Curtis, Wall Street Journal

“In Aerotropolis, John Kasarda of the University of North Carolina and his co-author, Greg Lindsay, convincingly put the airport at the centre of modern urban life.” ―The Economist

“To find yourself at La Guardia Airport, that repository of bad food, dim lighting, unsettlingly indistinct odors and too-short runways, is to be inclined toward embracing John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay and all they have to say about the future of travel and modern life. Kasarda, a professor in the business school at the University of North Carolina who has consulted with four White House administrations and numerous cities and governments, believes that something very different from La Guardia is transforming our world . . . Kasarda's theories are presented in the ambitious Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next, which is written by [Greg] Lindsay, who as the journalist onboard fulfills the role of eager messenger . . . [He] flies around the world, conducting interviews, seeking evidence, translating Kasarda's technical jargon into a lively if sometimes flawed work of pop behavioral economics . . . Aerotropolis offers intriguing arguments.” ―Michael Powell, The New York Times Book Review

“An odd, fascinating new book… an enthralling and only intermittently dogmatic tour of some of the gigantic, no-context sites that globalization has created, such as the all-night flower auction in Amsterdam that gets roses from Kenya to Chicago before they've wilted, the FoxConn factory in China where iPods and iPhones are made, and the mega-hospital Bumrungrad in Bangkok, which performs cut-rate major surgery on the uninsured from all over the world.” ―Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker

“Fascinating and important work . . . Aerotropolis follows in the tradition of works such as Edge City (1992) that blend jargon-free scholarship with shoe-leather reporting to tell readers why they're living and working as they are . . . That Kasarda and Lindsay are onto something big seems beyond dispute.” ―Paul M. Barrett, Bloomberg Businessweek

“An essential guide to the twenty-first century.” ―Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

“Thanks to the manifold effects of modern aviation, earth and sky are merging in our world faster and more thoroughly than most people know. But you won't be most people after reading Aerotropolis. Throw out your old atlas. The new version is here.” ―Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air

“A fascinating window into the complex emergent urban future. This book is an extremely sophisticated, often devastatingly witty and ironic interpretation of what is possible over the next two decades. It is not science fiction. It is science and technology in action. The authors have one foot firmly planted in the possible and foreseeable.” ―Saskia Sassen, Professor, Columbia University, and author of Territory, Authority, Rights

“Aerotropolis presents a radical, futuristic vision of a world where we build our cities around airports rather than the reverse. This book ties together urbanism, global economics, international relations, sociology, and insights from adventures in places that aren't even on the map yet to present a plausible new paradigm for understanding how we relate to the skies. Perhaps the most compelling book on globalization in years.” ―Parag Khanna, Senior Fellow, New America Foundation, and author of How to Run the World

“Very few people realize how profoundly air transport is changing our cities, our economies, our social systems, and our systems of governance. If you want to be way ahead of the curve in understanding one of the most important drivers of change for the twenty-first century, read this book.” ―Paul Romer, Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

“Aerotropolis redraws the world map, using air routes to trace the new connections and competition between mega-regions that will shape the geography of the Great Reset. This lively, thought-provoking book is a must-read for anyone interested in how and where we will live and work in a truly global era.” ―Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, University of Toronto, and author of The Great Reset

“Aerotropolis comprehensively explains the enormous effects modern aviation has on cities and countries around the world. It is a unique resource.” ―Frederick W. Smith, Chairman and CEO, FedEx Corporation