Airports are a key part of our globalized world, and calls for their expansion and development are becoming increasingly common. But airports can have negative effects on their local areas– air and noise pollution, and traffic congestion. Do airports’ benefits outweigh their costs to local areas? In new research that examines the 25 largest airports in the U.S., Julie Cidell finds that while airports may drive economic activity within a region, more often than not, that activity is occurring outside the vicinity of the airport. She writes that aspects of an airport’s location, such as nearby industry and transport links often serve as job creators, rather than the airport itself

Cidell, Julie

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blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/11/04/claims-that-airports-are-a-citys-economic-engine-are-overstated-especially-when-compared-to-other-local-infrastructure/Claims that airports are a city’s “economic engine” areoverstated, especially when compared to other localinfrastructure.Airports are a key part of our globalized world, and calls for their expansion and development arebecoming increasingly common. But airports can have negative effects on their local areas– airand noise pollution, and traffic congestion. Do airports’ benefits outweigh their costs to localareas? In new research that examines the 25 largest airports in the U.S., Julie Cidell finds thatwhile airports may drive economic activity within a region, more often than not, that activity isoccurring outside the vicinity of the airport. She writes that aspects of an airport’s location, suchas nearby industry and transport links often serve as job creators, rather than the airport itself.It is rare to find an article or report about a major US airport that doesn’t describe it as the “economic engine” of itsmetropolitan region (see Figure 1). Indeed, there are many studies that indicate a positive connection betweenincreasing air traffic capacity or air traffic and the number of firms in a region. Such studies are commonly used tojustify airport expansion and the development of an “aerotropolis” or “airport city” through increasing the airportfootprint and/or building new runways and terminals, under the logic that the region as a whole will benefit fromthe expansion. However, breaking down the connection between transportation and economic developmentacross time and/or space can lead to different results. For example, in peripheral European regions, the causalityarrow goes from air traffic to economic development, but in core cities, it’s the other way around.We know that the negative effects of airports—air pollution, noise pollution, labor competition, and trafficcongestion—occur at a local scale, within 5-6 miles of the airport boundary. While the argument is often made that“you knew there was an airport there when you moved,” that argument is usually wrong for two reasons: a) manyairport-adjacent neighborhoods predate jet aircraft, and b) despite their vast, fixed infrastructure, airports move.For example, a study of Phoenix concluded that it was the airport and its disamenities that moved into residentialneighborhoods, not the other way around. Nevertheless, very few studies of the air transportation-economicdevelopment relationship are broken down at finer scales to enable an equitable comparison to the negativeeffects of airports.That was the purpose of my recent study. I focused on the largest 25 airports in the US and carried out twodifferent kinds of spatial analyses as described below. For both, I found that more often than not, the economicdevelopment an airport brings to its region is not only equally spatially clustered as the negative environmentaleffects, but that development is occurring somewhere other than the vicinity of the airport. In other words, airportneighbors are not sacrificing for the good of the region as a whole, but for other neighborhoods equivalent in sizeto their own, raising questions of spatial equity regarding facilities that draw on a great deal of government moneyand yet are not producing benefits region-wide.Figure 1 – Advertisement at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, 2005Photograph by author.Airports as urban infrastructurePrevious studies have argued that airports are significant job generators using a simple methodology: drawingcircles of 2.5, 5, and 10 mile radii around the airport, counting the number of jobs within, and comparing thatnumber to the central business district (CBD). I used the same methodology to draw rings around two majorpieces of infrastructure found in every US metropolitan area: the largest shopping mall and the largest wastewatertreatment plant. I also chose the point in the metropolitan area directly opposite from the airport across the CBD toact as a control. I then compared those numbers to the jobs in the CBD (all data were taken from the 2007 USEconomic Census), with the results in Figure 2, below.Figure 2 – Jobs in infrastructure radii compared as percentage of those in Central Business District(CBD)Surprisingly, at all distances studied, a wastewater treatment plant is a more important “job generator” than theairport. Is a wastewater treatment plant therefore the “economic engine” of its region? Such a facility generatesrelatively few jobs, either directly or indirectly. Presumably, this finding does not have to do with the characteristicsof the plant itself as a job generator, but with its surroundings. Such plants are often located on major waterwaysand can be considered a locally unwanted land use much as the airport. For both these reasons, they are likely tobe surrounded by industrial land rather than residential. Similarly, of course, one could argue that it is not theairport qua airport that is generating jobs, but rather other features of its immediate location such as groundtransportation access—features which potentially could be reproduced in other locations without the hazards ofnoise and air pollution.Regional spatial analysesThe second part of this study focused on the specific categories of firms that have been shown to be attracted tometropolitan areas by air service—professional and administrative services—and determined their spatialdistribution in comparison to the airport. Figure 3 is an example of how the four different spatial analyses look inone metro region, plus the major pieces of infrastructure I discussed earlier.Figure 3 – Spatial analyses conducted for PhoenixMap by authorThe weighted mean center analyses of key infrastructure and professional services, indicated that for only 8 of the25 airports studied (including Phoenix as pictured), that the center is within 5-6 miles of the airport. In other words,for two-thirds of the airports studied, the economic benefits are occurring at a greater distance from the airportthan the negative effects. The standard deviational ellipses showed that this distance might not be too far: 76percent of the airports were within the ellipse, suggesting that even if airports are not in close proximity to thecenter of airport-related development, they are within one standard deviation of it. However, that distribution mightnot be even across space. Local and global Moran’s I analyses showed that professional service firms and theirassociated jobs are clustered in space—but of the 25 airports studied, only 8 were in or adjacent to a “hot spot” ofthese firms. Six were in a “cold spot.” The airport may be driving economic activity within the region—but moreoften than not, that activity is occurring outside the vicinity of the airport.Figure 4 – Storm clouds over O’Hare International Airport.Photo by author.The goal of my research was to empirically explore the frequently-made statement that airports are the “economicengines” of their regions. There are two parts to this: to what extent are airports drivers of local employment ascompared to other large pieces of infrastructure, and what is the spatial distribution of the firms brought to a regionby its air service? In both cases, I found that the “economic engine” claims are probably overstated, at least whenwe compare their spatial distribution to the distribution of the airport’s negative effects. Other major pieces ofinfrastructure such as shopping malls and wastewater treatment plants have as many or more jobs in their vicinityas airports do. The professional services firms that have been shown to be attracted to metropolitan regions areclustered in space rather than being evenly spread throughout the region, and those clusters are more often thannot outside the range of where negative environmental and economic effects occur.Any large piece of infrastructure, whether an airport, a shopping mall, or a wastewater treatment plant, will havepositive and negative effects both within the immediate vicinity and across the entire region. Nevertheless, suchinfrastructure has to be sited somewhere. Taking into account the spatial distribution of that infrastructure’s effects,both positive and negative, can make clearer the questions of who benefits and who pays—as well as what mightbe done to offset the costs for those who suffer the negative effects of such infrastructure without reaping theeconomic benefits. This article is based on the paper ‘The role of major infrastructure in subregional economic development: anempirical study of airports and cities’, in the Journal of Economic Geography. Featured image: Phoenix Airport  Credit: Robert Couse-Baker (Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.             Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1tWnANS _________________________________ About the authorJulie Cidell - University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignJulie Cidell is an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where herwork focuses on two main areas: the political economy of transportation, and green buildings andpublic policy. She has also worked as a transportation engineer in Boston and taught physicalgeography in northern and southern CaliforniaCC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

Claims that airports are a city’s “economic engine” are overstated, especially when compared to other local infrastructure

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