Orlando International Airport in Florida is ready to build a new terminal to serve air traffic as well as high speed rail, which will connect directly to the vast local convention centre, Tampa, and later to Miami. It will make the airport the centre of the state.

Except that Florida's tea-party new governor has shut everything down. Not even a visit from the foreign minister of Japan sufficed to persuade him that trains are the Next New Thing. Could Richard Branson call the governor tomorrow?

The fact that the option to obtain new developments is being rejected because the ideals do not satisfy some opinons does not help the fact that all of the technology as a whole is trying to better the civilization that is currently operational and these terminals are just a way of transportation that will at least better the world for a short amount of time, what is the harm in trying? Who is it hurting?

High Speed Rail should be used in the U.S. to supplement short and regional routes. HSR uses about one quarter the fuel, per passenger, that a jet does; about one-sixth what a car does, pp.

Infrastructure costs aren't going away. We may as well forge a new system where we are drastically cutting oil usage.

iknoeverthing wrote: The fact that the option to obtain new developments is being rejected because the ideals do not satisfy some opinons does not help the fact that all of the technology as a whole is trying to better the civilization that is currently operational and these terminals are just a way of transportation that will at least better the world for a short amount of time, what is the harm in trying? Who is it hurting?

You know everything save how to construct a sentence that doesn't run on...and on...

Exactly. Airports are the major transportation nodes in the US and some have become development magnets (others not--missed opportunity). So it makes eminently good sense to connect Orlando Airport to Tampa and eventually to Miami International Airport, which already has a rail terminal. The state has a huge unmet demand for medium-distance transportation, and the best solution seems to be to run trains to and from the airports, not city centers.

It's true that airports attract a lot of jobs. In Toronto where I live there is a large concentration of jobs (largely industrial, though also a significant concentration of suburban office parks) near Pearson Airport, in the west end of Toronto proper and in the suburban municipalities of Mississauga, Brampton and Vaughan. However, areas around airports are hardly desirable places to live because of noise pollution. Neighbourhoods that lie under airport flight paths like Malton, Rexdale, Dixon Road, Jane/Finch, Bramalea are invariably low income or at best lower middle class areas. Because of this I don't think that the idea of an "aerotropolis" is a very good idea, we should focus on developing our downtowns.

Can anyone think of an example of airport-centered urban development anywhere OUTSIDE the United States? If not, then this is just an American aberration, a country-specific solution just like the railway-centered urban development in Japan....

There is a new branch of psychology called "Ecopsychology". It deals with the healing and health (both physical and mental) giving aspect of surroundings that abound in natural beauty. There will be no place for such surroundings in concrete jungles. Already one in five humans is supposed to have some form of mental illness. We can be sure that an affluent society will build aerotropolises where the rich can fly and the poor will be those that provide entertainment in assylums