The Noida Airport developments show the most ambition of any airport oriented new city. It also represents a timing of airport new city strategy emerging in India with Noida and Navi Mumbai airports both opening very recently. For these two narratives, the development will be interesting to follow.
The projects will be built over an 165km stretch of the Yamuna Expressway, hoping the highway will serve as a linkage between all the developments. YEIDA (Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority) has control over the projects.
The plans are ambitious and vague simultaneously. A world class business zone, Central Park like park, 'Olympic City', and 'Aerotropolils' are all a part of the 2041 master-plan, though details on how they would coexist are unclear.
Noida International Airport opened yesterday, though for the time being is only set to have domestic flights. This new airport despite its name is located an hour outside of Noida (which itself is a Delhi suburb) through rural areas. It represents the gateway to a new region of development.
India are a leader in the new trend of airport oriented new master-planned cities. Perhaps, their most ambitious collection of plans is that surrounding Noida Airport.
Senai Airport City will be interesting to follow as it represents a unique situation in the airport new city building world of building cities around a primary airport and better connecting transportation networks of the wider region.
As of now, there have been minor instances of construction in phase 1, though phase 2 is likely to see the majority of the construction and the city develop into more of something that would be considered a city.
Another unique factor about this development is that Senai Airport despite its suburban location is actually the main airport servicing the Johor Bahru metro area, rather than a secondary airport hoping to develop like other examples.
The master-planned "Greenfield" city is located within "Brownfield" industrial areas and has had 500 million Ringgit ($167 million CAD) invested in it with a further 200 million ($67 million CAD) to come.
Senai Airport City, located in the SEZ of Iskandar in Johor province, is yet another attempt at the development of an airport city. Uniquely, Senai also focuses on linkages of the larger region through various interchange infrastructure projects.
Like the vast majority of new city projects, speculation should still exist over whether or not this will come to fruition, but if it does it should be interesting to analyze, especially in conjunction with other new airport cities.
Another interesting aspect of this project relative to its comparable projects is that Mumbai is significantly larger than either of the aforementioned cities, however geographically the airport and new city are much less accessible and more oriented towards specific areas.
This timeline is interesting as it demonstrates that the airport development was either decided upon or implemented before the city development. Perhaps this will allow for it to grow and gain traction by the timing of the master-plan's development and build.
The state government's urban planning authority is currently in the process of selecting a consultant to construct a master-plan but has goals in mind regarding the "residential, commercial, retail, mixed-use and industrial buildings" it wants in the city.
Navi Mumbai Aerocity is being developed around Navi Mumbai International Airport, a new airport opened 3 weeks ago. The airport like Bradfield (Sydney) and Lanseria (Joburg) is a suburban secondary airport servicing a major metro area. In this case, focus is on the Mumbai suburb of Navi Mumbai.
My findings of Bradfield and Lanseria have inspired me to look into airport oriented new city development. In this airport new city building phenomenon, India is the leader including Navi Mumbai Aerocity.
Bradfield serves as an interesting example to compare and contrast around both Cherrywood and Lanseria and should help provide perspectives into the development of new city suburbs in the Global North and airport oriented new city development.
