ancient cities

different ways in which technology has been implemented
at the airport over the past 100 years.
The airport is one of the most significant sites of
human–machine interaction in contemporary life.
The airport is the site par excellence where multiple
networks—both human and nonhuman, global
and local—interact across multiple scales. In such
a context, a new set of concerns needs to be taken
into account when considering the human and cultural
factors at play in everyday networks, not only
those that are specifically concerned with aviation.
This interaction of scale can be seen at the airport
as increasingly mammoth: Airplanes interface with
passengers, who are scanned and checked down to
scales as minute as the irises of their eyes. Further,
the ability of digital technologies to duplicate, distribute,
and manipulate data has enabled networks
to converge in an unprecedented fashion. “Hard”
and “soft” networks (like technical infrastructure,
code and information flows, the flesh of the passenger,
and metal of the plane) can no longer be
considered as discrete and separate.
The Birth of the Aerodrome
The modern airport evolved out of the converging
operations of commercial, governmental, military,
and private interests. The first structures built for air
travel were largely produced in an ad hoc and
unplanned manner. Runways, passenger terminals,
and communication networks were constructed with
little concern for logistical interconnection or future
development. Initially aviation was not seen as suitable
for mass transportation and was developed
mainly for mail and small freight services. Due to the
danger and discomfort of early planes, the transportation
of human cargo was seen primarily as the
preserve of a small and daring mobile elite. Passenger
services were initially dependent on government
policies that linked profitable mail contracts to the
less profitable cargo of human passengers.
Moreover, government authorities were not keen
to invest in the necessary infrastructure involved in
this costly mode of transportation, and as a consequence,
aviation regulation and planning was largely
neglected. For this reason the growth of complex
urban infrastructure around the early aerodromes
quickly outstripped their original usage, and surrounding
hinterland gradually became annexed as
part of the growing regime of the airport. Many
Airports
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cities whose major airport developed out of the first
aerodrome soon found their airport’s physical capacity
for expansion severely limited by the growth of
suburban and exurban developments. This, coupled
with a growing need for local, state, and national
government regulation led to a number of crises
that culminated during the immediate post–World
War II period. Aided by the huge investments in
aviation design and infrastructure made during war
time, aviation as a mode of mass passenger transport
began to boom.
As aircraft design and flight times improved, air
travel became desirable and potentially profitable.
In the years following World War II, urban planners
and architects began envisaging a future in which
air travel would facilitate new business opportunities
on an international scale. Various design styles
for both terminals and airports were trialed during
this period. Large hall structures, satellite designs,
and terminals encircling ring roads were all tried,
each attempting to resolve logistical issues of getting
passengers to terminal to plane, and plane to terminal
to runway as seamlessly as possible.
The Airport as Mass Transportation Hub
Passenger services had always been one of the least
stable sectors of aviation and remain secondary to
military aviation in terms of profitability as well as
research and development. Civil aviation, like telecommunications,
has had vigorous competition on
the profitable main routes, and airlines have had
national obligations to service less-profitable
regional routes. The introduction of jet aircraft
such as the Boeing 707 (itself a spin-off of military
aviation research) provided a major boost to the
flagging civil aviation industry. Faster, quieter,
more comfortable, and able to fly longer without
refueling, jets began to make passenger services
financially viable. The first full jet services in the
early 1960s spawned a new popular vision of aviation
as accessible to the “common person”—flight
itself became a commodity.
Jet age airports staged this popular vision by
way of their architecture, entwining capitalism and
glamour in order to invoke a particularly optimistic
vision of the future. Their individualistic shapes
and vaulting interiors helped promote the idea that
anyone could access the limitless horizons that had
previously been the provenance of the rich and