At the heart of every aerotropolis is a successful airport. Busy commercial airports are increasingly recognised as producers of local and regional benefit. They have become ever more important economic engines as business travel and air cargo expands, benefiting aviation-dependent firms not only in the immediate airport area but often those considerable distances away.

Even in today's rocky economic times, airports and their immediate environs are becoming 21st-century commercial anchors, taking on many features of destination retail and urban centers.

Aviation-linked commercial development, once confined largely to airport property and its immediate environs, is rapidly spreading outward. In the process, a new airport-anchored urban economic region is forming — the aerotropolis. The aerotropolis encompasses the airport city and the air commerce driven areas surrounding it.

This book chapter examines the rise of India's modern civil aviation sector and the opportunities and challenges its airlines and airports have faced. A number of specific cases are provided.

Airports in the 21st century are experiencing a new and distinct evolutionary stage—the "airport city." What started out in the early 1990s—a handful of European and U.S. air gateways substantially notching up their duty-free and traditional terminal retail and eateries—has become a world-wide phenomenon of airport commercial expansion and diversification. In the process, gateway airports have assumed roles few before anticipated.

A path-breaking endeavor to construct the world's first green aerotropolis is rapidly progressing in Northwest Florida. The St. Joe Company, Florida's largest landholder, is partnering with the Panama City-Bay County Airport and Industrial District (Airport Authority), environmental groups, and public and private-sector organizations to develop 75,000 acres of land centered around a new international airport. The 4,000-acre airport, scheduled to open in mid 2010, and its surrounding 71,000 acres have been designed to serve simultaneously as a catalyst for economic development, a model for 21st-century sustainability, and cornerstone for one of Florida's largest and most comprehensive environmental preservation efforts.

Air routes operate as a physical Internet connecting supply chains, business people, and tourists quickly and efficiently across far-flung locations. The upshot is that route development, business development, and regional economic development go hand-in-hand around the globe.

India is forecasted to have double-digit annual growth in air passengers and cargo for years to come. The Ministry of Civil Aviation therefore plans to have up to 500 commercial airports in use by 2020. Many will be in smaller cities where airport operators envision incorporating aerotropolis principles, which will be challenging.

Memphis boasts the assets to become a top-class aerotropolis — and the leader in worldwide logistics management.

Airports have traditionally been viewed as places where aircraft operate and passengers and cargo transit. This traditional understanding is giving way to a broader, more encompassing model which recognizes the fact that along with their core aeronautical infrastructure and services, virtually all major airports have incorporated a wide variety of non-aeronautical facilities and services.

Dr John Kasarda reports on Hyderabad's plans to create one of the world's great airport cities at its new $390 million gateway.

Dr John Kasarda explains how a smaller Brazilian airport aims to revive its fortunes by transforming itself into an airport city.