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Commercial aviation continues to grow but few passenger or cargo journeys begin or end at airports. “Terminal” and “last” mile costs can place considerable drag on interregional trade in goods and services, attenuating growth and prosperity. The aerotropolis model provides a holistic framework for understanding – and addressing – trade costs. The central tenets of the aerotropolis model are outlined and extended by considering the decision to establish a new business facility. Implications are drawn for planning a competitive aerotropolis as the global economy enters a new era.

This chapter studies the technical efficiencies of Chinese airports by using a meta-frontier production function model which accounts for airports in different regions accessing different technologies. Our empirical results show that the technical efficiency scores of airports and provincial output in the coastal region are higher than their counterparts in the inland region. However, the technical efficiency scores of airports and provincial output in inland region are steadily increasing while the counterparts of airports and provincial output in coastal region are slowly declining. In addition, our analysis of provincial efficiency changes shows that airport productivity has a positive and statistically significant effect on the technical changes of provincial output. Our results partially confirm the success of the government policy of promoting airport construction and development in the western inland region.

The rapidly changing role of capital city airports has placed demands on surrounding infrastructure. The need for infrastructure management and coordination is increasing as airports and cities grow and share common infrastructure frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to document the changing context in Australia, where the privatisation of airports has stimulated considerable land development with resulting pressures on surrounding infrastructure provision. It aims to describe a tool that is being developed to support decision‐making between various stakeholders in the airport region. The use of planning support systems improves both communication and data transfer between stakeholders and provides a foundation for complex decisions on infrastructure.

The research uses a case study approach and focuses on Brisbane International Airport and Brisbane City Council. The research is primarily descriptive and provides an empirical assessment of the challenges of developing and implementing planning support systems as a tool for governance and decision‐making.

The research assesses the challenges in implementing a common data platform for stakeholders. Agency data platforms and models, traditional roles in infrastructure planning, and integrating similar data platforms all provide barriers to sharing a common language. The use of a decision support system has to be shared by all stakeholders with a common platform that can be versatile enough to support scenarios and changing conditions. The use of iPads^® for scenario modelling provides stakeholders the opportunity to interact, compare scenarios and views, and react with the modellers to explore other options.

The research confirms that planning support systems have to be accessible and interactive by their users. The Airport City concept is a new and evolving focus for airport development and will place continuing pressure on infrastructure servicing. A coordinated and efficient approach to infrastructure decision‐making is critical, and an interactive planning support system that can model infrastructure scenarios provides a sound tool for governance.

The concept of hinterland is changing with a globalized economy, new needs between airports, stakeholders and the tourist destination challenge new dimensions of operation in the territory. Identifying new factors and actors in the influence zone of the hinterland will allow us to stage the importance of airports in the regional economy and the positive effects derived from these. The aim of this paper is to analyse the hinterland of Málaga Costa del Sol airport and its territorial and economic dimensions. Moreover, to provide an updated and clearer definition of hinterland, assuming future implications for airport operators, management of tourist destination by destination marketing organizations and scholars and practitioners interested in this topic. The results revealed that Málaga’s airport is modifying the hinterland of airport and its area of influence in economic and urban development terms.

Airports and urban developments in their vicinity constitute a highly specialized type of agglomeration based on air connectivity that epitomizes the importance of mobility in the modern service economy. However, in a frictionless world of backyard capitalism and perfect competition, such agglomeration of civil aviation services would not have been necessary. Thus, concepts such as imperfect markets, path dependence, and cumulative causation may be alternatively used to explain the spatial aspects of airport developments. Focusing on “second-nature” concentration, the “new geographical economics” (NGE) literature offers a potential theoretical framework that organizes these concepts into a coherent economic framework. This chapter aims to highlight the unique relevance of the NGE approach in developing an economics-based understanding of the spatial distribution of airports. Drawing from the existing NGE knowledge-base, this conceptual chapter explains that the NGE approach can be adopted as a micro-foundation to show how the spatial aspects of airport development, including core-periphery dynamics of regional disparity and parity, can emerge from economic mechanisms. The chapter concludes with potential implications for airport economics and regional policy, along with the discussion of some of the main critiques of the theory.