International Airports as Growth Poles

A Case Study of Heathrow Airport

Bibliographic Data

ID8963578
AuthorsA G Hoare, A Hoare (corresponding author)
Year1974
Issue63
Pages75-75
Publication date1974-11-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2307/621533
OpenAlexW2328365750
LanguageEN
Citations received12

This paper investigates certain aspects of the possible 'growth-pole' effects of Heathrow Airport on surrounding opportunities for employment. Field surveys of manufacturing and office firms attempt primarily to determine the nature and strength of 'indirect' linkages associated with the Airport. Its positive and negative effects on the location decisions and evaluations of firms are analysed, as are certain spatial aspects of the business use of Heathrow. Finally, an attempt is made to determine the role of the Airport in the regional and sub-regional geography of manufacturing growth. Overall, the findings suggest that, while the 'indirect' growth-pole consequences are highly complex, little evidence exists for its exerting a marked stimulative effect on the local employment categories analysed. THE concept of the growth polel has successfully withstood transplantation from one academic discipline to another without any apparent signs of 'rejection'. Originally conceived by Perroux2 as referring to economic growth concentrated in one portion of 'economic space', geographers now widely accept the concept as basic to the stimulation of economic growth in specific sections of geographical space. Governmental policies aimed at establishing growth poles to stimulate the development of surrounding areas can be seen as a means of combining the tendency for growth to occur unequally in space with planning objectives for regional and sub-regional development.3 Fundamental to all such policies, however, are the largely unanswered questions of the magnitude of the impact that any particular growth pole may have, of the geographical scale on which this impact will be felt, and of the types of commercial activities likely to be most affected. The research discussed in this paper examines these facets of the effect of one widely suggested type of growth pole, an international airport. Such 'growth' that a major airport generates can be disseminated to the surrounding area in a variety of ways. On the one hand, income gained by workers associated with the airport will circulate through the local and regional economy via the operation of the multiplier concept. On the other hand, growth poles are generally held to be characterized by 'propulsive industries' that stimulate other economic activity through a variety of backward and forward linkages. Adopting a broad definition of the term 'linkage', an airport could be linked to other firms both directly and indirectly: the former would incorporate companies specifically serving the airport and airport traffic (such as freight agents, hotels, or building maintenance firms) while indirect linkages would develop with firms that locate or expand close to the airport for easy access to its freight and passenger services. This paper is deliberately focused on firms likely to fall within the second, 'indirect', category, and thus cannot claim to provide a comprehensive investigation of the growth-pole effect of a major airport. Nevertheless, it is arguable that this facet of the problem deserves the most immediate attention, being far more elusive than the direct linkages just considered. Further justification for this specific attention to indirect linkages lies in the strong, but totally unproven, assumption that airports do exert a marked propulsive effect on this type of economic growth in their environs. Many statements to this effect are to be found in the mountainous literature directed to, and produced by, the deliberations of the Roskill Commission on the Third London 75 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.253 on Wed, 08 Jun 2016 06:24:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Airport.4 This general consensus of view, and the meagre relevant evidence presently available, are reviewed at length elsewhere,5 where it is emphasized how little we know of the magnitude of such indirect linkages, their geographical extent, and the types of firms most affected. The present research concentrates on the situation in the environs of London (Heathrow) Airport. If British airports exhibit any tendency towards growth-pole effects then it is logical on at least two grounds to expect that this will be particularly apparent in the case of Heathrow. First, Heathrow is unchallenged as the dominant national airport, a position it has held since the early I950s.6 Secondly, the south-east of England has enjoyed an employment growth rate in the post-war period in excess of the national rate, and it seems reasonable to expect that expanding firms will be more conscious of the value of air transport than those with stagnant or declining business. THE SURVEY To investigate the indirect linkages associated with Heathrow, separate interview surveys were arranged with factory and office firms in north-south trending survey areas extending up to 40-48 km (30-35 miles) from Heathrow. The firms were selected by stratified random samples from comprehensive lists of businesses in these areas, based largely on the records of H.M. Factory Inspectorate and the relevant local authorities.7 All firms employing under ten workers were eliminated from further consideration, as were those supplying basically local services (such as banks) or obviously directly linked to Heathrow (such as air freight agents). Interviews were conducted in the summer of I969 with 125 factories and 6i offices, the distribution of which appears in Figure I. At each interview, information was collected on certain basic characteristics of the respondent firm, the use it made of Heathrow for business purposes, and how the Airport affected its locational decisions and the advantages of its present location.8 It soon became apparent that the indirect effect of Heathrow is itself a complex phenomenon. Heathrow can influence the locational decisions of firms and the advantages and disadvantages experienced by firms once located. It also exerts an influence through the use that firms make of it as part of their normal business activities. Thus we may distinguish respectively a group of 'locational' and 'usage' impacts, while being aware that considerable overlap exists between the two; firms currently valuing ,their proximity to the Airport, for example, are likely also to make considerable use of it. A further complication arises in that, while the survey was designed to investigate the indirect effect of Heathrow on surrounding firms, many of these provided goods and services for the Airport, thus constituting direct linkages as well. These direct links cannot be ignored if a comprehensive picture is to be provided of the effects of Heathrow on the body of commercial activity under investigation. The analyses below consider first the locational impacts of Heathrow which, as will be seen, inevitably incorporate most of the usage impacts too, and it will be in this former sense that the term 'impact' is thus used hereafter. These locational impacts can be further subdivided into a series of positive (or beneficial) and negative (or detrimental) impacts. Negative impacts, of course, are not means whereby 'growth' spreads to the Airport environs, but rather ways by which growth is forgone or suppressed. Nevertheless, the overall growth-pole effect of Heathrow can only realistically be considered as a balance of often-contradictory forces. Further subdivision of these two basic categories produces the following four-fold classification: Positive impacts I. The initial attraction of firms by proximity to Heathrow 2. Locational benefits currently derived from proximity to Heathrow due to: (a) passenger services; (b) freight services; (c) work undertaken at Heathrow (a direct linkage) 76 A.G.HOARE This content downloaded from 157.55.39.253 on Wed, 08 Jun 2016 06:24:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Heathrow Airport as growth pole 77

Aeronautics · Business · Geography · International airport · Transport engineering · Aviation Industry Analysis and Trends · Engineering · Regional Economic and Spatial Analysis · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis

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