Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Airports as Social Spaces


29 April 2013
I remember chatting with a Human Geography professor during my undergrad. She briefly mentioned that she thinks airports are going to be the social hubs of the next generation. I understand what she means as now airports are 24/7 operations that house hotels, malls, and food courts so travelers don’t have to leave the airport. These operations stay open long after flight activity stops overnight. I skimmed an article about Melbourne opening a Woolworth’s supermarket in their airport so you can stock up on groceries before heading home from the airport. Great idea, I think that was the last component missing from the today’s airport.


I remember wandering the Vancouver airport while waiting for my midnight flight to Sydney to board. The seating was arranged in semi-circles with comfortable sofa-like benches with trees and decorative green touches. The spaces looked like the living room of a home. That was the most comfortable I have seen any airport, and I have spent countless hours in some of the biggest airports in the world.

It is one thing to design airports like massive living rooms but I am skeptical about the social side of airports. With all the security and drama you go through between arriving at the airport and boarding the plane, I am in no mood to happily strike up a conversation with the tired looking businessman standing behind me in the security line. I am so on edge: “is my bag overweight?” “Do they have my flight reservation?” “Is my flight delayed?” “Will the security line up move fast?” “Will I draw the unlucky card and be subject to a pat-down or the body scanner?” “Why do they make me take off my shoes!?” etc. And it doesn’t help that most flights happen early in the morning or late at night, from my experience.

Adding to the stress of long-distance travel (what most air-related travel is), exhaustion, and airport security theatrics, people tend to keep to themselves. Is that a function of our electronic age? I was so young when mobile phones and personal computers took over the social environment that I was not thinking about this at the time. While watching Mad Men last week, I noticed that the airport was a place to do business… Now remember that Mad Men is fiction based on historical events. Roger Sterling got a tip from his flight attendant girlfriend that an executive from Chevrolet was in the boarding lounge at the New York airport. Roger ordered a ticket on the flight and schmoozed this Chevy rep from the airport boarding lounge. He returned to his firm in New York the next day with an arranged meeting to pitch an advertising idea to Chevy. This was 1966, airports and planes were much smaller and far fewer people used airplanes to travel.
            Airports today are bigger than cities, and function as cities themselves! Airports are accessed by all kinds of people, not just big business and the very wealthy. Although supermarkets and malls bring all kinds of people together for one specific purpose, they are not “social hubs.” I think of airports like a supermarket: people share a space for a limited amount of time for the same reason; they do not need to actually interact with the people around them if they did not want to. Are airports the next social hub of our society? What do you think?

Vancouver airport - brings the outside in the comfort of your own "living room." See the seating to the bottom left of the picture.

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