Max Hirsh: Airport Urbanism

Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia is an unprecedented study of air travel and global migration patterns that incorporates the perspective of passengers, airport designers, and urban planners. Focusing on airport infrastructure in five Asian cities—Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore, Hirsh examines the exponential increase in international air traffic and its implications for the planning and design of the contemporary city.

By investigating the low-cost, informal, and transborder transport systems used by new members of the flying public—such as migrant workers, retirees, and Asia’s emerging middle class—he uncovers a geography of incipient global mobility that has been inconspicuously inserted into places not typically associated with the infrastructure of international air travel. Drawing on material gathered in the restricted zones of airports and border control facilities, Hirsh provides a fascinating, up-close view of the mechanics of cross-border mobility.

Please sign up by emailing kristinv@hum.ku.dk as reading material will be circulated in advance.

Organised by Uncertain Archives and generously funded by the Carlsberg Foundation