Greg Lindsay

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome journalist GREG LINDSAY for a conversation about the intersection of air travel and urban planning, and his new book Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next.

Not so long ago, airports were built near cities, and roads connected the one to the other. This pattern—the city in the center, the airport on the periphery— shaped life in the twentieth century, from the central city to exurban sprawl. Today, the ubiquity of jet travel, round-the-clock workdays, overnight shipping, and global business networks has turned the pattern inside out. Soon the airport will be at the center and the city will be built around it, the better to keep workers, suppliers, executives, and goods in touch with the global market. 

This is the aerotropolis: a combination of giant airport, planned city, shipping facility, and business hub. Already the aerotropolis approach to urban living is reshaping life in Beijing and Amsterdam, in China and Rwanda, in Dallas and the Washington, D.C., suburbs. The aerotropolis is the frontier of the next phase of globalization, whether we like it or not. 

John D. Kasarda defined the term “aerotropolis,” and he is now sought after worldwide as an adviser. Working with Kasarda’s ideas and research, Greg Lindsay gives us a vivid, at times disquieting look at these new cities in the making, the challenges they present to our environment and our usual ways of life, and the opportunities they offer to those who can adapt to them creatively.