This Airport Will Have Its Own City With Driverless Cars and Parachute Rides

Travelers heading to Norway’s Oslo Airport will soon be able to spend their time in a 43-million-square-foot city adjacent to the airport.

Haptic Architects and the Nordic Office of Architecture recently unveiled plans for the new Oslo Airport City where travelers will find everything from driverless cars to large swimming arenas offering views of the airport’s runways.

The “Airport City”, a term John Kasarda of the Center for Air Commerce at the University of North Carolina created to describe development projects that extend out from the airport’s grounds, will feature a slew of smart features that include driverless cars and power that stems solely from renewable energy.

All of the vehicles within the city will be electric, including high-speed light rails that will make it so citizens “will never be more than five minutes away from public transport,” according to Haptic representatives.

The city’s center will be kept car-free and its outer skirt swill serve as a testing bed for driverless technology.

While the Oslo City Airport won’t be the world’s first Airport City, its emphasis on leisure and sports activities in combination with business facilities gives the space what Haptic representatives say will be a more urban feel than other airport cities.

“What you normally have with airport cities is some type of business park where you’ll mainly find logistic buildings, but what we’re doing is creating an airport city with urban qualities that include streets, squares, and walkable spaces not blocked off by cars, in addition to building on the various sport and leisure qualities Norwegians are quite into,” Tomas Stokke, the director of the architecture firm, told Travel + Leisure.

 

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