131–140 of 574 posts
If you fly into Tokyo you might come in via Narita Airport (NRT) which is actually quite a distance out from tokyo. Violence is extremely uncommon in modern Japan but NRT was the site of violent resistance over several decades. Opposition forces killed several police officers, rioted on several occasions and constructed a giant 200 ft tower to interfere with test flights. Hundreds of acts of vandalism have occurred o…
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> US airports always seem to be surrounded by densely populated residential areas The US in general is very densely built up. The distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer. So I think its more of a case that US airports are surrounded by "less" densely populated areas. > And secondly Us airports always seem to take huge plots of land compared to Euro airports. With the except…
> The distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer. Huh? I felt the exact opposite in France. Many French cities have a bunch of nice parks, but everything else is wall-to-wall pavement. I always felt the common refrain about there being dog shit all over Paris is because on many streets there is barely a patch of grass for a dog to even go, so if you have a rude person that doe…
There's this classic French movie from the 70s, "Nous irons tous au paradis", where a group of friends buy a house really cheap. They can't believe their luck until they realize the house is next to an international airport (they visited the house when the air traffic controllers were on strike). Here's the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2aFksnIghQ It's a little bit absurd of course that they didn't bother t…
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In simple terms, people want airports, but nobody wants an airport near their house.
...same as with major roads, train lines, power lines, power plants (including but not limited to nuclear and wind), affordable (i.e. high density) housing etc. etc.
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> The distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer. Huh? I felt the exact opposite in France. Many French cities have a bunch of nice parks, but everything else is wall-to-wall pavement. I always felt the common refrain about there being dog shit all over Paris is because on many streets there is barely a patch of grass for a dog to even go, so if you have a rude person that doe…
I think it's less about the inner cities and more about the suburbs. In the US there are certainly lots of little bits of curb with plants on, but little in the way of large useful green space. Comparing the LA metro area to almost any European city, it's stark how much more unused or usable green space there is in Europe. The US seems much more binary – you're either in a city, or you're outside one, it's not like t…
YMMV significantly depending on the specific metro area. The suburbs of Seattle like Bellevue and Richmond were like that too - full of large parks and natural reserves everywhere.
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Ah, I meant that putting the airport farther from the mountains means the planes can take off heading west without circling around. I don't know if it's that far, however.
Stapleton was still east of Denver. I think the siting of DIA was probably more that there was a bunch of flat relatively empty land even further east. It's been a while since I flew into Denver but my recollection is the airport is pretty hell and gone from the city.
Now there's tons of developments - which is always a problem for these airports. I remember when SEATAC was far outside the city and everyone hated it, now it's crammed in the middle of the Seattle/Tacoma metro area, which is all one big blob city.
There's been discussions where the "next" airport should go in the Seattle region, and the consensus is that nobody wants it. The State Legislature created a commission to try and identify some potential sites, but the public backlash was so great that they ended up submitting it's final report with no actual recommendation. One of the interesting ideas (that was proposed even back when SEA was adding it's third runw…
In theory there was a good place for an airport if those restrictions were removed
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> One of the interesting ideas [...] is to run high-speed rail to Moses Lake Airport in Central Washington and just expand there. While reading this article, I thought about something like that too. Build an airport quite a while away from the big city, and provide a high-speed, maybe even maglev train there. Make it free for customers. Also, make it very inconvenient for passengers and staff to approach the airport…
Only allow cargo delivery via rail as well. This way this deincentivize road traffic as much as possible.
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Yeah, it is basically always is a bit pointless without context. Same with e.g. Paris. Paris itself is "tiny". But Île-de-France (the Paris region) has over 12 million people.
Another one: just 7000 people live in the City of London
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Ah, I meant that putting the airport farther from the mountains means the planes can take off heading west without circling around. I don't know if it's that far, however.
Stapleton was still east of Denver. I think the siting of DIA was probably more that there was a bunch of flat relatively empty land even further east. It's been a while since I flew into Denver but my recollection is the airport is pretty hell and gone from the city.