Georgia International Convention Center at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson Airport, the world’s busiest, is an excellent example of one of America’s new cities the “Aerotropolis”. America has been building new cities for over 75 years. Some of these new cities are called “Edge Cities”,  “New Urbanism” developments, “Live, Work Play” communities are a few. The DNA and psychographics of how communities interplay with public assembly facilities has changed as dramatically. The needs of a neighborhood and that of a public assembly facility have some similarities. To be successful they both need amenities such as restaurants, entertainment, shopping, hotels and cultural facilities. The blending of these catalystic components is an art form like a fine recipe. All of the components must come together and be synergistic with each other. Blended properly these components can yield much more success then they could ever hope to independently.

The newest city form, the Aerotropolis yields a total 360 degree approach to airports. In the past we have built them on the outskirts of town and tried to avoid them. The new approach has to do with developing a city all around the airport. Crazy you may say but lets look briefly back into the past. Most major cities were built around transportation tributaries first to the sea, then to rivers, rail and interstate. Now with the advent of the internet people want to purchase their goods and want them delivered tomorrow. Thus the airport has become the next transportation corridor. Before you turn away with a jaundiced eye look to Bangkok where a new $4 billion mega-airport will soon be finished. It will pump some 100 million passengers through its gates in a year. That is more than JFK, LaGuardia and Newark combined. That doesn’t even consider the freight that will go through. Nearly 40% of the total economic value of all goods produced in the world is shipped by air and 50% of all total U. S. exports valued at $554 billion. Hong Kong is premising its entire world-trade strategy on the primacy of the airport: Its Chek Lap Kok already has a mini-city stationed on a nearby island for its 45,000 workers, and SkyCity, a complex of office towers, convention centers, and hotels will soon be visible from its ticket counters. The same process is taking place elsewhere in the world as well. Several cities in India will see their airports dramatically scaled up in the coming years. The endless building spree in Dubai includes construction of the world's largest aerotropolis--Dubai World Central--which will begin opening in stages as early as next year. (By the time it's completed, DWC will have more than twice the capacity of Frankfurt's airport and a permanent population of 750,000, all at an estimated cost of $33 billion.) In Amsterdam, office space next door to Schiphol Airport costs more per square foot than an open loft on one of the city's picturesque 17th-century canals.

If your community has or is planning a public assembly facility it can supercharge it by being aware of where the world is going.