Speaking of transportation paradigms, I remember New York Magazine’s featuring a rethinking of airport travel from SHoP architects:

It’s a high-speed-rail loop, in which trains would serve both as a means of conveyance to the airport and, in effect, as the airport. In a bold new check-in paradigm, passengers would get their boarding passes and go through security at special stations in Union Square and Red Hook (and Astoria and Grand Central and …), then hop on trains that would let them out directly at their plane. Such an approach would have the added benefit of reducing the airport space devoted to terminals, making room for more runways.

While their proposal to double the amount of runways at JFK is nigh impossible due to the limitations of airspace and safe airplane taxi regulations, this proposal is certainly interesting. A precedent (on a smaller scale) is undoubtedly Eero Saarinen’s Mobile Lounges featured at Dulles International Airport, but on a grand scale. This is a grand gesture in the manner of Daniel Burnham, and because of that, it has zero chance of happening in New York City. However, this plan could be executed quite nicely at a tabla rasa, such as all of those cities China is building.