CHINA's New Airports
Xinzheng International Airport (CGO)
Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone - ZAEZ
Aerotropolis and The Zaez Experience
Skyrocketing passenger and cargo traffic at the
airport in Zhengzhou is fueling the growth of China's first
Copy Edited by
Ronald Almeida: revision_03
Access RAS in 06may2016
On China’s central plains, an ‘aerotropolis’ grows near Zhengzhou [06may2016]
Access RAS in 06may2016.
[1] ZHENGZHOU, China:
1. If you have an iPhone, there’s a good chance it came
from an enormous factory near the airport of this metropolis in China’s
heartland.
2. But “Apple City,”
the aptly named Foxconn plant where 250,000 people work, is just one of many smartphone manufacturers here.
3. There are more than a dozen others, including Coolpad,
Amer, TianYu, and ZhongXing, who altogether produce more than 140 million
smartphones per year — 13 percent of the global stock.
4. These companies are fully dependent upon the vibrant
airport known as Xinzheng International
(CGO). Parts and other materials are flown in, they
are quickly assembled into finished phones, and flown back out to markets
across the globe.
5. Since 2010, the land around the airport has changed
from an agricultural area with rural villages into one of China’s most
economically dynamic areas. It’s called the Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone, or ZAEZ, and it’s
exactly what it says it is: a massive industrial, commercial, and logistics hub
purposely built with air transport at its core.
6. China has many special economic zones, but the ZAEZ is the first to be spatially and economically centered
around an airport. It’s been an almost instant success, and has provided the
blueprint for dozens more similar airport-centered cities across China.
7. Five times the size of Manhattan, the zone is a city
within a city, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the historic core of
Zhengzhou. The zone boasts eight industrial parks and a growing number of
office and residential towers, and generates nearly US$6 billion in
imports and exports each year — well over half the foreign trade of Henan
Province.
8. The ZAEZ is a prime example of what JOHN KASARDA calls an “aerotropolis.” Kasarda is the chief advisor
to the ZAEZ,
and, along with Greg Lindsay, the co-author of Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Not long ago this airport area was “relatively
isolated, rural, there was nothing there,” Kasarda says. “This has all happened
within the past five or six years. It’s amazing. The amount of investment, the
amount of exports, the amount of overall development.”
9. According to Kasarda, metropolitan subregions whose
infrastructure, land use, and economy are all centered around an airport will
be some of the 21st century’s largest economic drivers. He says it’s an urban
design strategy custom-built for the “economy of speed,” in which a premium is
placed on moving high-value products — and people — quickly around the world.
10. “The fastest, best connected places are winning,”
Kasarda asserts. “It’s not size. Speed and connectivity can trump size. It’s
not the big beating the small, but the fast beating the slow. Look at Dubai,
look at Singapore, look at Hong Kong attracting global business. They are
relatively small places but amazing hubs.”
[2] A new model
11. Kasarda believes the aerotropolis is the fifth wave in
a long evolution of humans developing cities around transport. We once built
our population and economic centers around seaports. The action then moved
inland along rivers and canals, then along railways and, later on, along
highways. Now, cities are being built around airports.
12. Currently, 35 percent of the value of global trade is
being shipped via aircraft. Building essential business infrastructure close to
airports gives companies faster access to their suppliers and customers. It
makes these enterprises, as well as the broader urban ecosystems in which they
function, more versatile and efficient. The higher the value of the goods or
services involved, the bigger the gains.
13. “It could be sushi-grade tuna, it could be
smartphones, it could be aerospace components,” Kasarda says. “But it also
could be corporate executives and investors and various people in finance and
media and marketing that are all part of this rapid movement of connectivity.”
Xinzheng
International Airport outside of Zhengzhou is the focus of a special economic
zone five times the size of Manhattan. (photo provided by John Kasarda)
14.
The trend is already in high gear, and not just in
China. In the Netherlands, the “Amsterdam Airport Area” is home to more
than 1,000 multinational firms. South Korea has the Songdo International Business District, built on
reclaimed land near Incheon International Airport. Hong Kong, currently the
busiest air-cargo hub in the world, has established Sky City, a massive retail,
exhibition, office, hotel and entertainment center.
15. In the United States, a sort of aerotropolis is
developing in Texas outside the gates of Dallas-Fort Worth International
Airport. One development called Las Colinas is home to the headquarters of nine Fortune 1,000
companies. Another, called Southlake, is an upscale residential neighborhood
intentionally integrated within the air-hub ecosystem. It’s become a hotspot
for upper-tier corporate executives, professional athletes, media personalities
and others who like living a ten-minute taxi ride from their next flight.
16. “People who have to travel often for work want to live
next to the airport,” says Mike Tesoriero, owner of Southlake Style
Magazine. “There are many professional
golfers and football players [here]; they travel often and they can catch their
flights quickly and easily.”
[3] Design challenge
17. While lots of airports are surrounded by a sprawl of
warehouses and office parks, Kasarda sees the aerotropolis as something that requires master planning to reach its full
potential. In his vision, the airport is at the center of a sort of development
bullseye. Surrounding it are rings of industrial zones, and mixed-use areas
with shopping malls, offices and houses, as well as some of the city’s best
international schools and medical facilities. Kasarda insists there is a
science to getting all the pieces to work together.
18. The risk is that these cities will become little more
than sterile logistics zones and never become the sort of walkable urban places
where people might want to live or visit. “Usually, airport cities are
technological, low density, outstretched environments that lack character,”
says Joost van den Hoek, a Shanghai-based urban designer. “They are transit
landscapes for logistics and business and not a destination in themselves. The
main urban design challenge for airport cities is creating character and
creating a destination where you also would like to go if you don’t need to
fly.”
19. Matthias Bauer, an urban planner at the design and
engineering firm Atkins Asia Pacific, agrees with the criticism. “Just think of
it: As a passenger, how often are you able to conveniently walk from the
airport terminal to an adjacent hotel, office park or conference center?” Bauer
says. “And how often is this basically impossible because eight-lane highways,
cloverleaf interchanges, fly-overs, retaining walls, and security fences are in
the way?”
20. Kasarda hopes the ZAEZ can avoid these
pitfalls. But it is still very much a work in progress. Entering into the zone
from Zhengzhou’s central core feels like crossing a frontier. The gray
skeletons of apartment blocks and office towers rise up from a freshly laid
grid of highways as wide as eight lanes. Blocky gray factories and
blue corrugated-steel warehouses fit neatly within the rectangular plots.
Hundreds of thousands of people work in the various factory compounds here, but
the streets are still in the process of coming to life.
In
the Netherlands, the ”Amsterdam Airport Area” has more than 1,000
multinational firms.
(photo
provided by John Kasarda)
21. One of the Zone’s key selling points is its
well-developed logistical infrastructure. The ZAEZ is
positioned at the economic heart of China, just a couple of hours by air from
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. It also sits at the intersection of some of
China’s most vital highways and high-speed rail lines. One of those highways,
known as the Western Europe-Western China Expressway, will extend all the way
to St. Petersburg, Russia by next year. Two cargo-rail lines to Europe also
cross through the ZAEZ — one
going north to Russia and the other going west through Kazakhstan.
22. “A successful aerotropolis,” Kasarda says, “is as much
a function of good surface connectivity as it is aviation connectivity.”
23. Traffic at Xinzheng Airport is booming, and there is a
new terminal and runway to accommodate the growth. The number of passengers
traveling through is now comparable to the airports in Cairo or Manchester, and
is growing at about 17 percent a year. Cargo volume is growing even faster, at
about 40 percent a year. Xinzheng is now
China’s ninth-busiest cargo airport.
24. It’s not just smartphones leaving on those planes but
other high-value added products, such as other electronics, pharmaceuticals,
medical devices, meat, and fresh flowers.
25. “Due to high additional value, low weight, small
volume, and high demand for transfer speed, biomedicine products highly rely on
air freight,” says Gao Jianxin, general manager of the U. S.-China Medicine Development Center, a major biomedical R&D enterprise
located in the ZAEZ.
“Locations adjacent to hub airports are critical to the development of the
biomedicine industry.”
26. The ZAEZ was developed by FIAT. As China’s first and only state-level
airport economic zone, it sits under the direct auspices of Beijing. Which is
to say it has the full political and economic backing of the Communist Party, a
very important determinant for success. When development on the ZAEZ began in 2010, the goal was to make it into the primary
growth engine of China’s central plains region, and the people pulling the
strings had to power to make this happen quickly.
27. “Generally, development in China is not primarily
market-driven but pushed forward by local governments in anticipation of future
demand,” explains Bauer. “Or indeed, in order to create future demand from scratch.”
28. China is now
looking to replicate the success of the ZAEZ in dozens of
other cities, such as Qingdao, Xi’an, and Nanjing, where airport areas are being built up to be commercial as well as
logistical hubs.
29. “Speedy connectivity to suppliers, customers, and
enterprise partners … increases the efficiency of the businesses,” Kasarda
says. “And it increases the efficiency of the places where the businesses are
located. That’s the proposition of the aerotropolis.”
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