statement about the aerotropolis

Above you see a map of the current state of world aerotropolises, with my travel path marked in purple.  Over the next two months, I will be chasing these omnipolises, existing and future.  My destinations include Hong Kong, India, Dubai, Istanbul and Amsterdam.  My interest is to develop the thesis of a future terminal city that accommodates those in transit and those immobilized in a new urban architecture.

As a symptom of globalization by mobilization, the terminal building, formerly an isolated object at the periphery will become the city center of a new kind of city. As Paul Virilio recently stated: 

All this will produce a complete overhaul of sedentariness and nomadism.  Sedentary people will be at home everywhere: in hi-speed trains, in jets, in lifts, with their mobile phones and their laptops. Nomads will be at home nowhere: they’ll be out in the street, in tents, in transit camps. All this will call the city, world settlement, into question. Railway stations, airports, ports will become the real city centers, but of a different city. An ultracity: ultraville. A city no longer metropolitan but omnipolitan - meaning, it will be wherever things are moving, wherever people are in flux, displaced, deported.

I am interested in 3 main aspects of the terminal city project: 

1. the conditions of sedentariness and transit, manifested at the urban scale

2. the context of the global city of Istanbul, in the ensemble where EAST meets WEST

3. the form of the architecture which accommodates the above stated condition

To borrow terms from the Platform for a Permanent Modernity, these interests can be restated:

1. the territorial infrastructure of the terminal city

2. the urban complex of Istanbul as a microcosm of global settlement flow and flux 

3. the building as architectural object which is at once urban monument and self-city

...with these interests and ideas, I will interrogate my destinations for clues as to how the future transitport for Istanbul becomes.  My plan of attack: cultural experiences, social interaction, transportation, and organic exploration.