Rethinking Destinations: The Airport City
A new model of development brings downtown density to airport-adjacent parcels, capitalizing on global interconnectivity, creating vibrancy, and catalyzing innovation.
A unified plan for a parcel near Ningbo’s airport in China creates a connective axis from the airport and train station into a vibrant agri-tourism zone and cultural destination. The plan creates distinct districts for work, innovation, leisure, and living while embracing diverse experiences and enhancing urban infrastructure for extreme connectivity.
Airport Cities Should Be Fascinating
Traditionally, areas surrounding airports have been uninspiring—defined by office parks, chain hotels, logistics warehouses, highways, rail lines, and parking lots. While the best urban downtowns are celebrated for their vibrant, walkable, mixed-use environments, airport cities have rarely been considered true destinations.
This is changing. Across the globe, new airports such as in Navi Mumbai and redeveloped hubs such as Hong Kong International are transforming airport-adjacent land into inventive, people-focused places that incorporate urban elements to foster vibrancy. With direct access to airport terminals, airport cities offer global connectivity, high visibility, diverse user groups, and 24/7 energy. Today, these places aspire to be both fascinating and functional—establishing themselves as a new type of urban district.
An airport city in Ningbo, China is connected to transit and unified by a central axis.
A Transformational Paradigm
The Airports Council International projects that the number of air travel passengers will more than double over the next 25 years. As cities and airports prepare for this dramatic increase in travelers and flights, they are competing to create environments that about much more than transit. Airports are increasingly designed as destinations—inviting, entertaining, and comfortable spaces to shop, dine, and relax.
Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in Singapore. The Jewel at Changi Airport stands as a landmark example, offering a vibrant, immersive experience that attracts both travelers and locals. Here, airside and landside visitors—global and local populations—mix in the millions every year. Other airports are following suit, though on a smaller scale. The TWA Hotel at JFK, for example, offers a unique stay for layovers or staycations, standing out from typical airport hotels. These singular attractions within the airport ecosystem demonstrate the potential for airports to become much more than transit points.
By blurring the boundaries between airside and landside, removing barriers between airport terminals and urban districts, and introducing seamless, technology-enabled security, airports and their immediately adjacent areas can become integrated air hubs and vibrant 15-minute walking districts for both travelers and locals.
The Airports Council International estimates that by 2053, 22.3 billion air passengers will travel each year.
One Node in the Poly-Centric City
The futuristic dream of the “aerotropolis” defined 30 years ago, imagined airports as the new center of the city. The reality is our urban centers are increasingly poly-centric with multiple urban nodes. The airport city can be a distinct node, whose direct connection to millions of travelers make it uniquely positioned to be a hub of global business and innovation.
Jewel, at Changi Airport in Singapore, has become an attraction in its own right.
Blurring the Line Between Airside and Landside
In many ways, the major components of successful airport cities mirror the key ingredients of successful downtowns. To compete for tenants, users, and financing, they must provide more than air transport, logistics offices, and transit hotels. They need to transform into Central Social Districts—dynamic, mixed-use alternatives to mono-functional urbanism. Airport environments should attract visitors with fascinating architectural elements and exciting amenities, delivering an integrated and coherent urban experience while creating a welcoming atmosphere that makes both visitors and locals feel at ease in a place connected to its regional context.
The Human Side of the Runway
For the municipalities that build them, airport cities offer exposure to millions of new people every year. This continuous flow of travelers facilitates economic and cultural exchange, creating opportunities for international business hubs, hospitality and event venues, arts and cultural centers, distinctive retail and food and beverage environments, and even university-anchored research institutes.
Because the airport city’s user base is its essential fuel, it must provide not only what people need, but also more than they ever expected—a place of discovery during layovers, with “wow” attractions like the Jewel, and a wide variety of distinctive experiences including hotels that accommodate irregular check-in and check-out times. These places can serve as social condensers, attracting and mixing visitors arriving by air—whether on a short layover or a longer trip—with locals from other city districts, offering a wide variety of user personas exactly what they are looking for as well as welcome surprises.
These are places where an executive on a business trip might cross paths with a researcher visiting an innovation conference, or where a family of tourists and a local couple can enjoy a meal at the same restaurant. To create this dense web of social interactions, airport cities must be designed as places where people genuinely want to spend their time.
Successful airport cities combine a wide variety of mixed-use programs into a coherent, urban environment that connects the terminal to the city.
Human-Centric Places
Traditionally, airport master plans have focused almost entirely on infrastructure—access roads, rail lines, skytrains, parking, rental car facilities, and logistics buildings. JFK is a legacy example: a complex maze of infrastructure serving terminals, with little space left for anything else.
Today, the most innovative airport ecosystems recognize that the valuable land next to terminals should be reserved not just for infrastructure, but for vibrant, human-centered urban districts. These new districts are designed to enhance the experience and meet the needs of travelers, airport employees, and local residents alike—creating places that support modern lifestyles and foster a strong urban identity.
Aerial view of the John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in Queens, New York.
Airport cities can learn from Central Social Districts and leverage amenities such as food and beverage offerings, retail, and cultural activations to animate the streetscape.
Amenitization Means Business
Our experience creating successful mixed-use environments worldwide demonstrates that high-quality amenities are essential to success. In addition to Class-A office and co-working spaces, distinctive hotels, and unique retail and food and beverage offerings, it is inspirational moments that can truly set airport cities apart—urban elements that attract travelers to leave the terminal and encourage locals to visit the airport city.
These moments include dramatic architecture, art installations, entertainment and leisure venues, and must-see, Instagrammable destinations. Strategically integrated throughout the airport city, these features create memorable experiences, bring people together, and aid in wayfinding5.
Thoughtful amenitization also reinforces a sense of authenticity and helps define a fresh local identity, counteracting the placelessness often associated with global travel. Spaces filled with greenery, biophilic elements, indoor-outdoor connections, and inviting lighting encourage people to linger—helping relieve the stresses that can accompany travel.
A massive glass sculpture offers sense of place and aids in wayfinding at the Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi designed by KPF.
Airport cities are designed around multiple modes of transit and micromobility to enable frictionless
movement between the airport terminal, the airport city, and the surrounding urban region.
Frictionlessness
For the thousands of travelers with layovers ranging from two to 24 hours each day, biometrics are essential for creating seamless and efficient connections between flights and urban experiences. Modern technology eliminates the need for physical documents, long lines, and repeated customs and immigration checks.
By blurring the physical boundaries between airport terminals and adjacent urban districts—and by providing a frictionless, technology-enabled security experience—the airport city becomes a true 15-minute neighborhood through pedestrian and micromobility networks. A traveler with a several-hour layover can easily find something appealing to do without worrying about missing their connection, while someone with 24 hours or more can enjoy a diverse range of convenient, exciting, and engaging activities.
No Room for Growth
Many older airports were designed with terminals located around a central access and infrastructural core. Because of the constrained site, there is little opportunity to create an airport city.
Intelligent Phasing
Because airport cities evolve over many years, they are designed for long-term flexibility and adaptability in response to shifting economic conditions, travel trends, and technological innovations. A phased approach to development—where each stage feels complete and vibrant on its own—is essential. The ultimate goal is to create a seamless, coherent urban district that enhances the broader regional and, in some cases, national economy.
Planned for Expansion
Proximity to terminals and infrastructure enables the airport city to grow into a vibrant urban environment. Thoughtful, long-term planning is necessary to realize a dynamic airport city.
Atemporal Urbanism
Unlike typical cities, airport cities operate on a truly 24-hour cycle, shaped by flights arriving and departing at all hours. This creates an environment where activities overlap and blend, transforming the airport city into a multi-layered terrain of experiences. In this atemporal setting, one traveler may be starting their day while another is winding down for the night—breakfast for one may be dinner for another. For both travelers and locals, the airport city offers opportunities to meet diverse needs and desires at any time, ensuring an urban experience around the clock. In cities that largely wind down at the end of the work day, their airport districts can serve as places for late night entertainment.
A New Type of Urban Asset
As global cities compete for top talent and economic activity, urban environments are evolving in innovative ways. While central business districts are transforming into vibrant, 24/7 social hubs, new airport cities have the opportunity to build this model of amenitized, connected urbanism from the ground up—becoming destinations in their own right, not just transit points.
Although airport cities are unlikely to replace traditional city centers, they can redefine what it means to live, work, and play in a hyper-connected age. For travelers and locals alike, these dynamic environments—where diverse urban experiences intersect—offer new possibilities and a fresh sense of place.
For municipalities, airport cities present an opportunity to align infrastructure investments with broader goals for sustainability and economic diversification, while standing out on the global stage.
