Plans are rapidly advancing for Riyadh’s King Salman International Airport (KSIA), a landmark project set to become one of the largest airports in the world by 2030. The development will span approximately 57 square kilometers — including around 12 square kilometers dedicated to supporting facilities such as residential areas, recreational spaces, retail, and logistics infrastructure. KSIA is projected to handle up to 100 million passengers annually, aligning with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to diversify the economy and establish the Kingdom as a leading global hub for travel and logistics.
The airport’s design includes six parallel runways and multiple terminals — an undeniably ambitious scale. But as we celebrate this bold vision, it’s important to ask: how will this scale translate into actual traveler experience?
When we design large-scale infrastructure like airports, context is everything. It’s not just about building bigger — it’s about building smarter. While demand for air travel is expected to potentially double in the next 15 to 20 years, growth will not happen automatically. It must be carefully supported by urban development, market strategy, and, most importantly, traveler behavior. The true value of scale lies in how it serves the needs of those who use it.
From conceptual renderings, KSIA appears to stretch over 1.5 kilometers from one edge to the other — based on the shortest side when scaled relative to aircraft. This vastness raises an important question: how walkable will the airport actually be?
Walking is an essential part of the airport experience. It gives travelers a sense of orientation, freedom, and movement. Once walking becomes inefficient — requiring buggies or people movers to cover long distances — the experience can quickly become exhausting, disjointed, or even disorienting. Even when assisted by transport, travelers must still navigate on foot to reach departure gates, amenities, or lounges. If distances are too great, this freedom becomes a burden.
Great airport design must strike a balance in scale — large enough to support diversity and flow, yet not so sprawling that it becomes impersonal or overwhelming. Like successful cities, it’s density that creates vibrancy.
Take the Dubai Mall as an example: despite a total floor area of 550,000 square meters, the actual building footprint is roughly half that size. Still, it welcomed over 90 million visitors in 2024. Its success isn’t due to scale alone, but to its dense, layered, and walkable layout. Visitors can explore, linger, and connect — all within a thoughtfully planned environment that respects human scale.
The walking distances within the mall align with pedestrian-friendly design principles — often within 500 meters — a benchmark commonly used in park master plans to encourage pauses, rest, and meaningful interaction.
In contrast, developments that are too vast or disconnected risk feeling like suburban sprawl: visually impressive, yet lacking intimacy, engagement, and emotional resonance.
Airports also face a distinct set of environmental and operational challenges. High ambient noise levels demand thoughtful acoustic solutions. Larger footprints mean higher costs for maintenance, energy, and staffing — all of which must be justified by actual usage and financial sustainability. Functionality and efficiency must remain central to design, not treated as an afterthought.
Another critical factor is connectivity: how well will KSIA integrate with Riyadh and encourage city exploration? If the airport becomes too isolated or overwhelming in scale, short-stay transit passengers may be discouraged from venturing beyond the terminal — missing an opportunity for the airport to serve as a gateway to the city’s culture and economy.
Ultimately, KSIA presents a remarkable opportunity to redefine airport design at a global scale. But its long-term success will depend not on its number of runways or terminals, but on how human-centered its design is, how intuitively it functions, and how well it evolves with the market and the city it serves.
Because vision alone doesn’t make an airport great — experience does. And experience must be walkable, navigable, culturally rooted, and economically sustainable. For a development of this magnitude, success will come not only from architectural impact, but from strategic planning, intelligent operations, and an adaptable, traveler-first approach.
Courtesy of Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia.
