Airports in Cities and Regions - KIT Scientific Publishing

4 A speculation about potential spatial consequences of an
emission-free air-traffic
Prelude
In the contrasting perspective I assume a new, emission-free air-technology. I shall
not try to speculate about its probability, but at least yesterday there was a short
notice in the papers, that within this year there will be an airplane with
‘Brennstoffzellen’. Instead I shall use this perhaps futuristic assumption as a basis
for a contrasting scenario of a global city-network, consisting of extended airports,
connected by frequent airlines
An emission-free air-technology would lead most probably to a new enormous
growth of air-traffic and more frequent air-connections. This could lead to a general
‘shrinking’ of the globe, measured in travel-time, which in turn would unify the globe
economically and culturally. The simple basic idea behind the conception of a new
global-city-network would induce the shift of the respective national borders to the
outer edges of the extended airport and give the extended airport itself the status of
nationally independent global unit, connected to other airports of the same status,
administered i.e. by the United Nations. The extended airport would be a kind of
‘township’ of a legally and politically unified global city. The global centrality of this
global-city-network would reach the whole globe: It would be the natural site for
global players, even for a global government. There might be ca. seven to ten ‘hubs’
on the globe, reachable for the population by air-traffic in up to two hours. The
virtual population of that ‘global-agglo’ would comprise several hundred million
people!
If this kind of an economically and culturally unified, globally decentralised global
city would be realised, than the different time-zones in the different ‘townships’ in
different continents, leading to severe jet-lags, would be become a serious problem.
Former students of mine proposed in a design for a new airport a new type of
building ‘containing’ the local time of other parts of the globe, so that one could
gradually adapt to one’s own bio rhythm. This is just an example of how such a new
kind of global city might lead to new problems but also to new solutions. At any rate,
an emission-free air-traffic would start a new Kondratieff-circle, and nobody can
know what this will mean for the future.
5 Final remarks
If we accept the uncertainty of the present situation concerning the future of airtransportation,
we should try to keep open both options – shrinking and growth of
air-traffic. As I have tried to line out, both options promise a profitable and
interesting future for the city.
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