L.A. losing out to proper 'aerotropolises'

A new book (Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next) that posits successful cities of the future will be defined by their world-class airports linked to transportation and distribution systems gets a skeptical review in the New York Times. Along the way, the authors suggest that Los Angeles is already being passed by, due to the mess called LAX.

Which is not to say that the authors fail as provocateurs. Lindsay explains well, for instance, why Los Angeles has put itself at a competitive disadvantage by failing to build a world-class airport. He quotes the operations manager at Los Angeles International, who says that “80 percent of all ­iPods sold at Christmas last year” went through LAX, most of them delivered from Hong Kong by Cathay Pacific 747s. But those same planes are as likely to cruise over Los Angeles, with “its tangle of runways and freeways,” to a proper aerotropolis, like Dallas-Fort Worth. Los Angeles “has begun a slow descent into flyover country as far as cargo is concerned,” Lindsay writes. “It’s Yogi Berra logic: nobody lands there anymore; it’s too crowded.”

Lindsay is co-author Greg Lindsay.