Welcome to the Age of the ‘Aerotropolis’

Call it Airworld 2.0. The airport of the future is here—think Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport—and it’s all about the “aerotropolis.” Word Spy traces the first use of the word aerotropolis—“a city in which the layout, infrastructure, and economy are centered around a major airport”—to 1994, but according to the New York Times Magazine’s Year in Ideas issue, the concept truly arrived in 2006. For a thorough look at the worldwide rise of the aerotropolis, check out Greg Lindsay’s terrific story in Fast Company earlier this year. “The aerotropolis represents the logic of globalization made flesh in the form of cities,” he writes.

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