Airports And Cities Can They Coexist By Ed Ayres World Watch July 2001 0001

As high-speed global commerce expands, and demand for air transport explodes, airports and cities are invading each.other’s space in increasingly hazardous ways. The conventional response is simply to keep expanding airport capacity. But more imagina- tive solutions are now needed. by Ed Ayres 44SOME PEOPLE THINK THE WORLD IS FLATlyl sa)’s the ’oice on the phone–a voice I have listened to many times in the past year. At first I hear this as a comment on myopic world’ievs, but then I realize it’s not just a figure of speech. The man I’m listening to, Jim Starry, is being droll. He realjy is talking about geometry. But he’s not referring to sailors who once worried that their ships might sail off the world’s edge. He’s ruminat- ing about the people who build airports. Their ram- i?avs are flat, and to Starrv, a Colorado-based ecological designer, this doesn’t make sense. A flat run\’av forces the 425-ton jet that is landing on it to thro\' its engines into reverse and burn a huge amount of fuel tQ come to a stop, he says. Imagine, instead, a landing strip that is slightly inclined–so that as the plane touches dOH’n it decelerates by rolling up a 2- to 3-percent grade. Imagine that the plane, too, has been given a cou- pIe of ke)’ design changes. First, just before touch- do\’n, a set of electric motors begins pre-rotating the \'heels so that vhen the plane lands it n’on’t encounter the huge, rubber-pulverizing friction that occurs \’hen…

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