ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of existing literature on placelessness applied to airports, with a focus on the classic treatment by Edward Relph, the critique within the mobility turn in geography and urban studies and the 'airport-city' literature. It then focuses on three small/medium-sized Australasian airports and describes the impact of recent transformations on their character as places invested with more than anodyne functionalist qualities. The chapter attempts to destabilize the polarity of place and placelessness in the airport realm, contest the notion of airports as placeless through the primary lens of airport land development, and illustrates place-making initiatives through case studies that raise issues of their own. Similarly, Adey's work has critiqued the tendency to overlook the microspace of the airport itself and its embeddedness within local and national cultures, histories, and uses. Driven by economic forces similar to those observed internationally commercialization, privatization, and deregulation all of Australia's major airports have transformed from mono-modal airports into airport-cities.
