Analysing Connectivity and Settlement Growth in Aerotropolis: A Spatial and Temporal Perspective

It is imperative to visualize the growing airport's significance in becoming a pivot of global mobility and its concomitant services and as a crucial point for generating huge conurbations and support services. Despite these speculations, a probable long-term projection is linked to a particular aerotropolis as inputs indicate a more uncertain outcome. This article attempts to find variables that are likely to have an impact on the aerotropolis, particularly from a policy and planning perspective. The motivation for comprehending such areas is to find the influence of change in landside accessibility in an aerotropolis on the dynamics of the hierarchy/order of settlements. So as to elaborate the objective, with the help of QGIS tools, analysis was done for the Northeast Region with regard to the Bagdogra Airport, Siliguri. An airport's direct, indirect, and induced effects on the area's economy encompass well beyond the airport city. Landside network effects are produced by airports serving as a CBD area, especially particularly in the context of air travel. Evidentially, the research attempts to identify the change in major socio-economic and demography aspects so as to observe the influence radii of connectivity changes on regional settlement patterns. It can be seen that major airports have been transforming from the status of just airport cities to that of emerging focal points in the metropolitan regions. Given the site of the airport in relation to the primary city centre is now considered to be of less significance than the airport's strategic position within the context of the region, the catalytic impacts, which imply that the influence of airports encompasses well beyond the city, are the outcomes. Therefore, there is a dire need for planning interventions to plan comprehensively for the upcoming Aerotropolis to avoid haphazard and unplanned growth deprived of the benefits of the airport as a development-inducing node.