Picture a dot and three circles around it, each larger than the preceding one. The

RIPPLE DEVELOPMENT: A Google Earth image of the aerotropolis built around the Hong Kong International Airport

dot in that picture is the Suvarnabhumi Airport, in suburban Bangkok. The innermost circle, a stone’s throw away from the airport, will house businesses and facilities that feed the airport and feed off it—like trade zones, warehouses and logistics hubs. The middle circle will house companies and other things business like convention centres and hotels. The outermost circle, 20 miles from the airstrip, will have clusters of high-rises for people who work in the two inner circles, and their other necessities and indulgences.

In terms of size, the airport is dwarfed by everything around it. Yet, it’s the primary reason the three circles can create a bustling, self-contained ecosystem. Suvarnabhumi is the shape and logic of our future cities. The essence of this thought is that rather than shunt an airport to the periphery of the city, put it in the middle and build everything around it.

Aerotropolis is the concept the makers or renovators of Nagpur, Durgapur, Kochi, Hassan, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bangalore airports have in mind as they build or modernise their airports. While their projects may not have the scale and sophistication as a Suvarnabhumi, the idea is the same.

They are being built not just as junctions for flights to take off and land. They are being designed to shape and drive economic activity in a region. They will alter the cityscape. They will change where and how we live, work and play. Says Professor John D Kasarda of Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, who conceived the aerotropolis model: "Airports will shape business location and urban development in the 21st century as much as highways did in the 20th century, railroads in the 19th and seaports in the 18th."

Since business linkages are paramount to make an aerotropolis viable, special economic zones (SEZs) are an obvious catalyst. "Without the SEZ, the airport will not be viable. Without the airport, nobody will come to an SEZ," says RC Sinha, Managing Director, Maharastra Airport Development Company (MADC), which is developing a cargo hub and an SEZ in Nagpur over 4,000 hectares at a cost of about Rs 5,500 crore over the next 20 years.

When finished, the SEZ and the hub will employ 120,000 and give indirect employment to another 300,000. According to Sinha, five million will settle in and around the hub. About 35 companies have booked space in the SEZ, including TCS, Wipro and L&T. Around 30,000 flats are being developed. And annual passenger traffic in the airport, which currently sees only 20 flights a day, is projected to grow from 500,000 to 14 million.

In Hyderabad, the GMR Group is looking to develop assembly hubs for gold and jewellery units and for medical tourism, besides IT, pharma and financial services, around the new airport it built. Says V Jayaraman, Chief Operating Officer (Property Development), GMR Group: "The artisans in similar assembly units in the Gulf are mostly from India. Working closer home can reduce the lure of travelling overseas." In Kochi, Cochin International Airport Limited is planning to invest Rs 5,000 crore in a 450-acre aerotropolis, which will include an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility, aviation training school, hotels, amusement park, golf course and an IT park.

Given the huge contiguous land requirement and project cost, an aerotropolis, in its truest form, is likely to come up around non-metro cities and towns. Like the Bengal Aerotropolis project, a Rs 10,000 crore greenfield project across 2,375 acres in the middle of the Durgapur-Asansol industrial belt. This will trigger a reverse flow of businesses from cities to towns, and spread the fruits of economic success, across regions and people.