Americas Future In Airport Infrastructure

Imagine a world without airports! Air travel has changed the way we live and work, but no one would be able to travel without airports. Over the past 100 years, air travel has gone from an unusual adventure to an everyday event. Discover the stories behind eight major U.S. airports, including how they were built, how many people they serve, and the problems and solutions that have changed air travel over the decades. Airports are a vital part of America's infrastructure, and their construction and expansion tell an important story about how Americans live and work today.

Man has dedicated large amounts of time and resources to construct airports. Mountains have been moved, new islands made in the sea, and vast swaths of land have been cleared all to make the dream of flight possible. The large scale building of international airports and the efforts and investment to make them possible will continue for the foreseeable future as air passenger numbers continue to rise. But what happens when the airport is unused? The default answer seems to be to clear the site and redevelop on a tabula rasa. The history of the site is ignored and the building stock and infrastructure carelessly demolished to make way for new development. While designers like Peter Latz have explored the idea of reusing post-industrial landscapes like steel plants while preserving their infrastructure, not much thought has been given to the post-airport condition. The re-use of airports presents unique issues because of their economic importance, role as transportation and infrastructure hubs, enormous buildings, substantial infrastructure and vast spaces. The current pattern of completely wiping away the airport and starting over from scratch is broken. The airport requires special attention and consideration from designers in order to successfully deal with the aforementioned issues. This thesis, then, intends to look at the potential re-use of airports in a critical manner, with an eye to the question: is there a better way to reuse the airport? Is there a way to re-use it that takes into account its former use as an airport and plays off these qualities to make new productive uses out of its buildings and infrastructure? Can the nature of an airport as both a "non-place" and "two-dimensional facsimiles of modern cities" be used to inform and enrich the reuse of the airport? With these questions in mind, Chicago's Midway International Airport was chosen as a testing ground. While it is still in use, for the purposes of this thesis, it is presumed to be unused. The thesis will attempt to repurpose the entirety of the airport: master planning the entire site with a park and city and looking at the repurposing of a portion of the terminal by reusing it as an economic incubator.

Passenger air travel is at an all-time high, and airports are investing in the infrastructure needed to meet demand. This report contains a comprehensive review of the role of the federal government in airport infrastructure funding and financing.