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Welcome to the age of the aerotropolis - mega-airports that cater to travellers’ every whim and give cities a new lease of life. But there’s a down side. In many areas, these mega-developments are swallowing up natural and agricultural lands and displacing local people.

Rose Bridger reports on this phenomenon.

Welcome to the aerotropolis All over the world, major developments called an ‘aerotropolis’ or airport city, are being constructed, planned and announced.

An aerotropolis is an airport-centric development. Inverting the traditional model of airport development, the airport is not built to serve a city. A city is built around an airport.

Aerotropolis-style development began in Europe and the US in the 1990s, most notably around Schiphol and Dallas/ Fort Worth airports. The most ambitious aerotropolis plans in Africa and Asia are on an even larger scale, with sites of over 100 km2 or more.

An aerotropolis is not a development for people. It is an urban form enabling explosive growth in aviation-dependent tourism and trade. Commercial development is clustered around an existing or new airport and is integrated with air services.

Development on an aerotropolis is designed to make use of aviation services, thus maximising an airport’s passenger and cargo throughput. Airport passengers are funnelled through shopping malls, hotels, cultural venues and office complexes.

Manufacturing, assembly and logistics facilities are linked with the airport’s cargo operations.

A symbiotic relationship is established, mutually reinforcing

the growth of the airport and the commercial development surrounding it. The aerotropolis locks us into aviation dependency, bringing an inevitable massive increase in fossil fuel consumption and worsening the climate crisis.

Aerotropolis-style development requires large, preferably greenfield (undeveloped) sites. When farmland is earmarked for aerotropolis development, rural communities face displacement and vast tracts of fertile soil are paved over.

Greenfield sites that are not cultivated are inevitably wildlife habitats, including forests, so construction means irrevocable loss of biodiversity and deforestation. The growth imperative driving aerotropolis developments is a recipe for urban sprawl, destroying ever more land and wildlife habitats.

At the 2015, acquisition for a

Picture: © Jock Tame

beginning of April announcement for the of 60 km2 of farmland greenfield airport in Bhogapuram, Andhara Pradesh, was

immediately met with major protests. About 7 000 people from 16 villages demonstrated outside government offices and blocked the main highway between Chennai and Kolkata for over an hour, defying a threat by police that anyone participating in the action would be arrested. Villages expressed concerns that they would be forced to give up their land for inadequate compensation.

In Taiwan, planned expropriation of 37 km2 of land, mostly highly fertile farmland, for the Taoyuan Aerotropolis threatens to displace 46 000 people. There are no clear plans for much of the site and once land is zoned for commercial use, its value skyrockets upwards, lining the pockets of construction firms, clear evidence that the aerotropolis is a pretext for a land grab. Affected residents and their supporters have held endless protests against land acquisition and eviction.

Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania claims 110 km2 as its ‘estate’, upon which it intends to build ‘massive shopping centres, high class tourist hotels, duty free ports, Export Processing Zones, educational institutions, custom bonded warehouses, curio shops, golf courses and a large game ranch’. Over 10 000 people living in Maasai pastoralist communities on the site are resisting

displacement.

In Nepal, 80 km2 of predominantly forested land has been earmarked for a second Kathmandu Airport, at Nijgadh. The Nepalese government has allocated nearly USD 5 million for preparatory works, including fencing off the site and felling the forest, clearing the land in preparation for a potential Malaysian investor.

Ministries reported disputes with locals over demarcation of the airport area and resettlement before handing the project over to investors.

In terms of scale and budget, major aerotropolis developments are among the largest megaprojects being planned and implemented by governments and corporations. Frequently, the bigger picture is that an aerotropolis is a key component of an integrated complex of destructive megaprojects including multi-lane road networks, deep water ports, logistics hubs and trade/growth/development corridors aiming to re-shape the economic map.

Construction of Istanbul’s third airport is tearing up forests north of the city.

Even if the airport achieves its goal of becoming the world’s biggest, handling 150 million passengers annually, the site, covering nearly 77 km2, far exceeds the size required for aviation operations.

The aerotropolis is part of a megaproject complex comprising a third bridge over the Bosphorus Strait, a canal running parallel to it linking the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, a three level sea tunnel running under the Bosphorus, and a motorway.

Wildlife habitats are being destroyed and wild boars, their food sources removed and with nowhere else to go, are often spotted roaming the streets of Istanbul.

The King Shaka International Airport aerotropolis [near Durban, South Africa] is the focal point of a freight-orientated megaproject: Dube Trade Port, an integrated, multimodal hub with ambitions to become ‘a crucial gateway to South Africa’. In turn, Dube Trade Port is a key component of ‘an industrial township’ that ‘will help provide easy access and a one stop shop for international investors, manufacturers and industrialists’ and is an ‘important part of the government’s pipeline of major infrastructure development projects’ including a logistics and industrial corridor.

Kuala Numu Airport, built on a former palm plantation on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, is to be integrated with two ports and will support the development of strategic industrial areas and the Sei Mangke Special Economic Zone. The airport opened in the midst of lingering land acquisition

protests in five villages. Construction of a toll road was stalled when affected residents refused to accept a compensation package. A conference presentation boasts of 100 km2 ‘available for development’ outside the airport fence.

Host communities are largely excluded from the governance of aerotropolis projects.

Heavy handed, centralized planning of an unprecedented magnitude designates the site and ensures provision of the requisite ‘network infrastructure’ - highways, power and water supply and telecoms. The airport, or a consortium, is granted a high degree of autonomy over the project. In many cases, foreign investors are major shareholders, placing the project even further from the control of local residents.

Singapore-based Changi Airport International (CAI) is an investor in the Andal Aerotropolis in West Bengal, a project dogged by resistance to land acquisition since 2009. Lavished with tax breaks by the state government - exemption from land

transfer tax, a major source of revenue, and a waiver on jet fuel sales tax - the project will benefit from a high degree of financial support from citizens, yet it is unaccountable to them. In January 2015, the Andal Aerotropolis was bestowed with ‘industrial township’ status granting it a sweeping range of powers including planning and tax collection. An official said that ‘the project will become an autonomous body and shall have all the municipality powers’. In April 2015 CAI raised its stake in the project from 25% to 32.2%.

The Ethiopian government is in the process of selecting a 144 km2 site for a new Addis Ababa airport. Five possible sites, which the project spokesperson declined to name, will be presented to the government for a decision. All of these include huge areas of farmland, and would necessitate the relocation of 10 000 people. Identification of the potential sites for the ‘mega-hub’ project was undertaken at a great distance from communities standing to be affected, using

satellite images.

Aerotropolis schemes claim to act as ‘economic engines’, galvanising growth in the wider region. A more accurate description of an aerotropolis is an economic enclave; the primary goal is to concentrate economic activity within the project boundary.

Aerotropolis developments claim to be self-contained and aspire to become ‘destinations in their own right’ - where passengers eat, stay in hotels, enjoy cultural and entertainment activities and conduct business meetings.

Freight related aerotropolis development is boosted by economic zones located within the project boundary, adjacent to or connected by highways. These zones, promoting international trade, go by a variety of names, unifying factors being a raft of tax breaks - giving tenants an unfair advantage over other businesses and eroding the tax base - other incentives and unparalleled connective infrastructure.

Examples include the Dube Trade Port IDZ (Industrial Development Zone) adjoining King Shaka International Airport in South Africa, which describes itself as ‘the heart of the emerging Aerotropolis’.

Several of India’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are linked with airports.

Tenants of Enterprize Zones near Manchester and Newquay in the UK are granted a Business Rate discount. In China, the model for aerotropolis development is that the airport is encompassed in a massive ‘airport economic zone’.

The Airport Economic Zone planned around Beijing Capital Airport spans 170 km2 and is dedicated to ‘boosting the city’s airportbased economy’. Aviation and businesses also benefit from the almost universal tax exemptions on fuel. Local and mediumsized businesses are marginalised as the aerotropolis serves the growth and profits of transnational corporations. The aerotropolis provides physical infrastructure and a supporting regulatory framework for turbo charging corporate globalization. It is a disastrous model of development and should be opposed by those working for social, economic and environmental justice around the world.

Reprinted from The Ecologist with kind permission.

Rose Bridger is a founder-member of the Global Anti-Aerotropolis Movement (GAAM).

To find out more, visit: www.antiaero.org Facebook: www.facebook.com/ GAAMovement Twitter: @AntiAeroGAAM