The Airport as Urban Territory: The Spatial Effects of Singapore's Changi Airport

Forthcoming Fall 2024

Anna Gasco

Airports are major drivers of economic development. Serving as vital links to global networks while being firmly rooted in local landscapes. But airports'massive infrastructures and externalities like noise and pollution create tensions, and present considerable challenges. What does this mean for spatial planning? What factors and stakeholders are involved? How to better plan airports and urban development’s relations? Singapore's Changi Airport regularly scores among the world's best from a travellers' perspective, but what about its presence and impact on its city and its region? 

Drawing on a decade of research focused on Singapore and its cross-border region, this book offers analysis of Changi Airport's spatial influence at different scales and different kinds of spaces, including rural areas, industrial and leisure zones, the hinterlands of Singapore's shiny metropolis. It uncovers the many actors involved, the complex networks of terrestrial linkages and interactions centered around the global hub, and the governance frameworks used to manage these. 

The result is not just a revealing portrait of Singapore's Changi Airport in its region, but the development of a new framework for thinking about how airports interact with their territories.

"If you want to see, feel, and grasp the inner workings of our contemporary urban condition, you have to follow Anna in her vivid and brilliant investigation. Cleverly taking Singapore’s Changi Airport as her vantage point, she leads us through the scales and spaces of modernity – runways, freeports, jungle flower farms, high-end electronic manufacturing, resorts – to forever change our understanding of what a city is." - Christian Salewski, architect and urban designer, Director of ETH Zurich Airports and Cities Research Platform

"This book is a must-read for scholars and practitioners of airport urbanism. Investigating one of the world's top aviation hubs through the lens of urban design, Gasco pinpoints the key factors that drive successful airport-led development. These 'six principles' offer valuable insights for anyone involved in the planning and design of airports -- and the cities that they serve." – Max Hirsh, Managing Director, Airport City Academy

Anna Gasco is Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, University of the Arts. She is an architect and urban designer with over 20 years of international experience in practice, research, and teaching.

Publication Year: 2024
304pp, 235mm x 185mm
13 maps and 144 figures 
Hardback
ISBN: 978-981-3251-07-6