Coordinating Sustainable Airport Landside Growth within the Urban Fabric
Project outline
Airport-led urban development at and around major airports has been defined as “Airport City”, “Aerotropolis” or “Airport Metropolis”. This urban growth model for airports is characterised by multi-functional land development, business precincts, hotels and retail complexes. Non-aviation landside development of airport property is becoming a global phenomenon. Revenues from real estate development are supplementing a volatile aviation market and offering alternative revenue streams to airports. This development concept has been embraced by many airports of different scales and in varied ways around the world. Airports world-wide have diversified their landside revenues with non-aviation commercial, industrial and retail development in order to increase revenues and spread risk in the notoriously volatile aviation market.
The primary question that this collaborative research seeks to answer is:
“How has airport-driven land development impacted the surrounding urban form?”
In particular, the following research objectives will guide the research:
- Examination of airport land-side development models in terms of land use types and functions: How have airports developed their sources of land-side revenue in lease arrangements? What types of land uses characterise the airport development model?
- Review of the impact of airport land development on surrounding metropolitan plans: How have airport and city land use plans been coordinated? How do airports and cities coordinate infrastructure?
- Assessment of the impact of airport land development on travel behaviour: Has airport land development increased or decreased car dependency? How have airports integrated public transport into land development?
These questions will be answered by analysing airports in Australia and Germany. Since privatisation, Australian capital city airports have rapidly developed real estate for non-aviation commercial land uses. German airports are often semi-privatised, and despite a strong trend towards commercial marketing of airport land, local and regional governments still have a strong influence on the decision-making processes of airport operators. Moreover, in Germany, commuting to work by public transport is more important and different urban/regional planning frameworks have led to different coordination mechanisms of land use planning. These differences in the institutional framework enable both research teams to highlight a diversity of airport-induced processes on a broad empirical basis.
Team
| Principal Investigators | Prof. Dr. Boris Braun, Institute of Geography, University of Cologne Prof. Douglas Baker, School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Property and Planning, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane |
| Chief Investigator | Dr. Md Kamruzzaman; Senior Lecturer, School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Property and Planning, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane |
| Postdoctoral researchers | Dr. Johanna Schlaack, Postdoctoral Researcher and Urbanist, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universität Berlin |
| Research fellows | Dipl.-Geogr. Fabian Sonnenburg, PhD candidate, Institute of Geography, University of Cologne Hannah Stanley, Graduate Urban and Regional Planner, PhD candidate, School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane |
| Master student | Magnus Keller, B.Sc., University of Cologne |
Timeline
September 2014 December 2014 March 2015 September 2015 Second half of 2015 | Kick-off workshops in Cologne and Berlin Kick-off workshops in Brisbane and Canberra Semi-structured expert interviews in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney Semi-structured expert interviews in Düsseldorf and Berlin Completion of joint publications |
Funding
The project is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN) within a ATN-DAAD Joint Research Co-operation Scheme for 2014 and 2015.