Airport Cities in U.S. Metropolitan Context

Download or read book Airport Cities in U.S. Metropolitan Context written by Stephen Appold and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Airports have long been a focus of urban planners. Airport cities, one of the three possible means of addressing the need for rapid airport access, are held to have emerged out of the aviation age. Systematic research into their prevalence and nature is lacking. Thus, airport city planning remains an ad hoc process without theoretical or empirical guidelines. Using Census 2000 CTPP data for the 51 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, the size and composition of airport area employment are placed in the context of three elements of urban form which characterize metropolitan spatial patterns: cones, corridors, and clusters. The areas surrounding major airports support significant aggregations of employment which are, on average, half as large as the corresponding CBDs. Transportation-providing employment is by far the most heavily represented sector. Transportation-supporting employment, especially wholesaling, is also represented. Transportation-using employment, such as producer services, is in nearly as much evidence as it is in other non-CBD urban sub-centers. These results provide a set of grounded expectations for those planning airport area development or re-development.