Planning Method of Airport Economic Zone Based on ‘Time-Critical’ Orientation

Research question：Planning Method of Airport Economic Zone Based on ‘Time-Critical’ Orientation. Background ：As a significant policy area of macroeconomic control and an important carrier of high quality development of local economy, airport economic zone’s planning method is different from that of ordinary urban areas, especially in the era of developing ‘speed economy’ based on time efficiency, air transportation is a major route to improve transportation efficiency and benefits, therefore, the airport economic zone with air transportation as its core power is supposed to take the improvement of ‘time-critical value’ as its main orientation. This paper is based on the aviation metropolis theory by John Kasarda, the father of the global aviation economy,Ram Menen's (air cargo leader and former Senior Vice President of Emirates Cargo) practical experience in the transport and industrial aspects of airports and Peter Calthorpe's research on TOD development, the above case study approach is applied to summarise the "Time-Critical Value" oriented approach to the development of airports. This paper will summarise the experiences of existing cases across the globe in terms of policy framework, economic characteristics, industrial or transport development layout.In this paper, the case-study method is adopted to generalize and summarize planning method of airport economic zone based on ‘time-critical’ orientation. There are many projects in the development and construction of airport economic zone worldwide. There are 17 national airport economic zones in China. Case experience in ‘airport industry, site selection, transportation and collaborative mechanism’ will be generalized and summarized in this paper. Key research cases will include: Amsterdam Schiff Airport, the Netherlands; Memphis Airport, USA; Beijing Daxing and Shunyi Airports, Zhengzhou Xinzheng Airport, Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, Hangzhou Xiaoshan Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao Airport; Overland RKSI and other airport economic zones. In this paper, by generalizing and summarizing cases, it is deemed that the planning method of airport economic zone includes four aspects: (1) introduce airport industry and function oriented by ‘time-critical’; (2) the site selection is mainly in its ‘fast accessibility’ to the airport runway; (3) transportation should be beneficial to improving the ‘connectivity’ between airport economic zone and airport runway; (4) establish the corresponding ‘collaborative mechanism’ to realize the collaborative and efficient operation of airport, airport economic zone and city. The following difficulties may exist in the planning of the airport economic zone in China: (1) The internal plans of the airport and the urban plans involve different profit-making entities, which make it challenging to coordinate with each other； (2) To achieve quick transportation access to the airport, the airport corporation, government departments and relevant passenger and cargo enterprises need to agree on the project's location, the construction of the road network and the control of the fencing network, etc. However, it is not easy to coordinate the implementation of the project at the moment. (3) The import of industry around airport should follow the principle of "time-critical value" to avoid excessive pursuit of economies of scale.