Love/Hate
Fancy New Airports Can’t Fix the Most Harmful Part of Air Travel
They may actually make it worse
You wouldn’t know it navigating the LaGuardias and Newarks of the world, but airports are getting bigger and fancier. As air travelers fly millions more miles every year, countries are turning away from the utilitarian facilities of decades past and toward awe-inspiring structures designed by celebrity architects.
The supersized airports of the future will have two things in common. The first will be their nature-oriented design — they’ll all be made of glass, soaked with light, filled with trees and other greenery. The second is that they will all help kill the planet.
In Beijing, for instance, the world’s largest airport will open next year. Designed by the late Zaha Hadid, its terminal will host 100 million passengers a year and occupy roughly the same area as Amazon’s HQ2. In Singapore, an all-glass structure built to resemble a giant jewel will also open next year. And in Mexico City, officials planned a $13 billion glass dome airport designed by Lord Norman Foster. (Citizens recently voted to pause construction on the project over cost concerns.)
Even the United States, where President Donald Trump has said airports resemble “third world countries,” has its own…
