John D. Kasarda is the leading developer of the Aerotropolis concept defining the roles of aviation and airports in shaping 21st-century logistics processes, business location, and urban economic growth. He is President of the Aerotropolis Institute China, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, and President and CEO of Aerotropolis Business Concepts LLC. He also served as the founding editor-in-chief of Logistics, an international scholarly journal, from 2016 to 2021.
Dr. Kasarda has published more than 100 articles and ten books on airport commercial opportunities, aviation infrastructure, logistics, and urban economic development. He is frequently quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and the international media. His book, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next (co-authored with Greg Lindsay), was featured in Time Magazine in 2011 as one of the “10 Ideas that will change the world”.
Dr. Kasarda has offered numerous workshops on airport city and aerotropolis development, logistics infrastructure, and global supply-chain management to airports, governments and multinational firms, many of which he has advised. He obtained his B.S. and M.B.A. (with Distinction) from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The recipient of many grants and awards, Dr. Kasarda has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his research on airport-driven economic development and is a former Senior Fellow and Trustee of the Urban Land Institute.
