TWO years ago John Kasarda, who teaches at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler business school, published a book called "Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next". It argues that airports are becoming anchors for a new type of city. Traditionally, airports have been built on urban fringes to serve pre-existing cities. Residents tend to think of them as necessary nuisances. Getting into the city from the airport is usually arduous and expensive: think of Heathrow, on the western edge of greater London, or O'Hare, along Chicago's northwestern fringes, connected to its city by a narrow, annexed strip of land. These airports, and others like them, serve their cities but are not, in any real sense, part of them. The cities were already there, and they needed airports. So they were built somewhere outside the city, preferably surrounded by empty land, or at least by sparsely populated areas; and residents tolerated them, but the easier it was to get in, out and away from them, the better.
