Rise of the Aerotropolis

By: Greg LindsayWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:10 AM

As competition shrinks the globe, the world is building giant airport-cities. They look monstrous to American eyes--and that could be a problem.

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A terminal at Suvarnabhumi International Airport, the Bangkok aerotropolis set to open later this year.

Prefab communities abut the high-speed rail lines at Hong Kong International.

This year's installment opened with the possibility of a Detroit aerotropolis as its premise. Nearly unique among major U.S. cities, Detroit has 25,000 acres of woods and open fields surrounding its main airport, a hub for Northwest Airlines. Just seven miles to the west--a straight shot along I-94--is a second, smaller airport, Willow Run, which caters to the chartered cargo and corporate jets of the Big Three automakers and their assorted suppliers. If one were to link the airfields with the highway, and with mass transit stretching to downtown Detroit, the spine for an aerotropolis would be in place.

Upon emerging three days later, three student teams presented master plans that offered everything from full-fledged logistics hubs around Willow Run to a grand boulevard running through a greenbelt of mixed-use neighborhoods and office parks designed in the high style of Silicon Valley. The aerotropolis, they concluded, could stem the massive brain drain from local universities and the entire region. It could anchor a new city, with 100,000 new residents, in Wayne County's western suburbs. Kasarda was ecstatic: "This could turn around all of southeastern Michigan!" And his hosts became his newest converts.

Three months later, Mulu Birru, Wayne County's economic development guru, presented a "best of" compilation of the students' designs to his boss, Wayne County executive Robert Ficano, along with a "nonbinding memorandum of understanding" for building the aerotropolis--a plea to the governor to grant them the cash and the planning powers necessary to bring Detroit and adjoining communities to the table. Birru, who worked a minor miracle by helping to turn Pittsburgh around, sees a Detroit aerotropolis as a haven for "green" architecture and a magnet for auto suppliers, biotech firms, ethanol plants, and just about any other technology-intensive business you can think of. In fact, auto-parts outfits such as Visteon, Magna, and the Chinese entrant Century Automotive have either built or are eyeing new campuses in the aerotropolis zone. (Many auto components today are lightweight and digital, and thus easily shipped by air.)

After our meeting, Birru's deputy and I drive off for another aerotropolis-site inspection, wending our way through the parking lot of Visteon Village, home to some 3,000 auto-parts workers and nearly as self-contained as the 19th-century New England mill town it resembles. We take the back roads to the future grounds of the Pinnacle Aeropark, a parcel of open land just south of Detroit's airport that will serve as a prototype for the aerotropolis when ground is broken next year.

At one point, we pull over next to a field of dandelions less than a mile from the runways. These thousand acres are set to become the Entertainment Center, a Magna-supported vision that could have been a leftover sketch from Suvarnabhumi. Hotels, a casino, a performing-arts center, retail, and even a horse-racing track (Magna's entertainment division happens to own Pimlico) would all sit here, cheek by jowl.

When you stand there, the airport peeking out from behind the overpass suddenly seems an optimistic symbol. It makes as much sense--and probably more--for the people of Detroit to orbit a new global portal as it does for them to cling to some frayed and decrepit version of Jane Jacobs's ideal. It's an opportunity for the city to start fresh, to recast itself in our networked economy's own image. It's a chance that Detroit, of all places, can ill afford to miss. The rest of us had better take good notes.