he fate of so-called airport cities lies largely in their location – that is, they stand a better chance of succeeding as organized, regional economic engines outside the U.S. than within.
   The airport city notion was first introduced in print in 1980 by Site Selection publisher McKinley Conway, and it has been expanded upon in subsequent years by Conway and others. These days, airport cities and their souped-up cousins, the aerotropolises, are defined as much more than air-passenger and cargo departure and arrival stations. They are commercial hubs serving aviation and non-aviation interests alike – destinations in themselves, offering retail, commercial, industrial, residential and entertainment assets that attract still more development over time.
   Successful airport cities are well documented in these pages and elsewhere; Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, Dallas/Ft. Worth International and Hong Kong's Sky City are three examples of airport cities at different stages of development.
   But what is it about the U.S. that, with a few exceptions, seems not to embrace the notion of the airport city? Granted, the only major, new U.S. airport is Denver International, now a dozen years old; a lack of new airports and boxed-in existing ones in many locations make it difficult to plan and execute large-scale, airport-based development projects. Meanwhile, new airports are being built throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, making new airport cities more plausible, at least where facility planning, land management and development visions are in sync.    Part of the problem in the U.S. is getting all the interested parties on the same page, which is no small feat.
   "One of the challenges that aerotropolises are having around the world right now is to demonstrate or at least convince advocates of downtown development that the airport and airport development reinforce that development and do not pull it away," says Dr. John Kasarda, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, and a leading proponent of the aerotropolis concept (www.aerotropolis.com). "Downtown areas are finally recognizing that airport development is, in fact, reinforcing their own development. One example is all the business located around Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. More than a thousand businesses came to the greater Amsterdam region because of the airport, and over 100 of those located in downtown Amsterdam and elsewhere in the city. So the aerotropolis reinforces downtown.
   "But," he adds, "there has been an issue in terms of what should be developed at and around the airport, and to what extent there should be development restrictions or less than full support of the metropolitan area."
   Whether Denver's new airport was sited with a future airport city in mind is open to debate. The main goal was to replace the obsolete Stapleton Airport as the city rapidly grew around it. With the exception of a wildlife refuge on the grounds of a former arsenal between the airport and the northern suburbs, there is no lack of land to develop. But only now is development getting under way.    "The challenge has always been the competition that goes on between the center city and the northern suburbs," says Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. "And there was controversy over whether air cargo was going to go to the new Denver International or to an adjacent general aviation airport southeast of it. And that's never really been resolved. But when DIA opened, there was great concern over revenues as it was going to be the most expensive airport to operate out of in the country."
   Those sentiments still make themselves known from time to time, says Clark, and development – in the past or present – involves the city, Adams County, and towns in the region, each with their own ideas about if and how development should occur.
   But development is under way, from Commerce City on Denver's northern side to Aurora, already Colorado's third-largest city, to the Gateway Denver area, on the airport's southeast side.
   "What is catalyzing now is a much longer-term look at development patterns that are driven by a series of significant construction projects that are going to occur," says Clark. These include a US$4.7-billion mass transit system, FasTracks, which includes an "air train" linking Union Station in downtown Denver and the airport; and a $2-billion expansion of the airport's main terminal, which this year will pass the 50-million-passengers-per-year mark. That's two years ahead of when DIA was forecast to cross that milestone.
   "These projects will drive a fairly significant construction boom over the next five years," says Clark, but still more development is on the horizon near the airport. "The Northeast Quadrant, bounded by I-25 on the west and I-70 on the south, is the next growth vector for the region, and DIA sits right in that vector. It will be the leading job-producing area in Colorado for about the next 25 years."
   Large tracts of inexpensive land near an airport with a $17-billion economic impact annually will eventually be developed – perhaps even into an airport city.
   "DIA was put out there with that purpose," Kasarda maintains, "and the airport city concept is beginning to get traction. The airport area is growing much faster than the metropolitan area as a whole, both in terms of jobs and business revenues. The land is beginning to be developed following principles of aviation-linked commercial development. Major projects are evolving in the immediate airport area, over 1,000 acres [405 hectares] in size, and you will see those have a significant impact on overall economic activity in the Denver area over the next four to five years."    Meanwhile, says Clark, "We have infrastructure challenges out there – county roads are being overwhelmed because they now have to carry urban-level amounts of traffic – and there is the fear of residential encroachment into the noise contours of the airport. An international airport always fears residential encroachment restricting its potential to grow. So we see this as the coincidence of all the major vectors you need to engage in trying to catalyze this into a major development play.
   "The greatest opportunity for the region to expand without spilling out onto the western plains of Kansas is that area [around DIA]. Commerce City particularly and Brighton, which is directly north of the airport, have pretty enlightened mayors and city councils, and by and large there is pretty much consensus within the community that that is the next growth area, and that we have not paid the attention to it that we needed to in terms of infrastructure. But there is the desire on the part of the community to have a major jobs and economic center around the airport."
   "It's off to a good start," notes Mary Rose Loney, an airport consultant working with the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.; she served as head of the DIA Partnership prior to that agency's being folded into Metro Denver EDC. "The next big opportunity to continue to energize growth in the DIA corridor is the rail link and determining where to strategically place stops on the light-rail system to maximize the development opportunities."
   Will those development opportunities result in an airport city, or simply development near the airport?
   "Airports are natural magnets that attract development," says Loney. "I like the idea of a driven airport city concept, because it helps to drive development in a compatible way. I have managed airports where development occurred without a strategic plan, which can create incompatible development, resulting in lawsuits between the airport and surrounding communities and so forth. So to the degree that airports can be smartly planned to avoid those conflicts, I'm all for it."
   Brand new airports with plenty of room for development – such as DIA – don't come along very often in the U.S. "The footprints of most of our large commercial airports are already in place, and development is already mature with limited opportunities to create a pure airport city," says Loney. "That's why DIA is so well positioned to be that unique aerotropolis in the United States."