Abstract:

Recent social movements have alerted public opinion and political administrations to the safety of the areas surrounding airports and the negative externalities produced by airport developments. From the economic geography perspective this is not a new issue, but due to the increasing importance of enlargements in airport capacity this has become a hot topic for policy makers and academics. Responsible airport development planning would avoid social conflicts and negative externalities in surrounding territories. Traditionally, the planning of airport developments has only focused on elements inside the airport; such as supply and demand forecasts and other aeronautical, engineering and economic variables. But the current airport framework presents new situations that cannot be solved by traditional methods since new and external variables are intrinsic to the decision-making process (Graham and Guyer, 1999). This paper deals with these new variables; in the sense of discussing how the trade-off between enlarging infrastructure and minimizing externalities are important elements in the decision making process regarding difficult-to-resolve incompatible land uses.

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