The aerotropolis: Urban sustainability perspectives from the regional city

Abstract

The aerotropolis—a metropolitan region with cities that capitalize on proximity to a globally networked economy’s airport—is regarded as the twenty-first century’s new urban-development paradigm. Similarly, the regional city—a polycentric metropolitan region with linked mixed-use centers, multi-modal corridors, multi-functional districts, and natural preserves—is regarded as an urban form of the future with global and local advantage. In this paper, the building blocks of the regional city, which are increasingly regarded as principles of a durable urbanism, inform a multi-criteria framework toward a sustainability assessment of the aerotropolis-built form. The implications for the redevelopment of a North American city as an aerotropolis are noted. The paper concludes with an expansive discussion of the sustainable urban form of the future.