Skyportz has welcomed one of the world’s leading town planning experts, Mike Day, to assist with vertiport site selection for the emerging electric air taxi industry.

Day will serve as the company’s vertiport network strategic property and place advisor.

Day is a principal of Hatch, a global firm dedicated to helping public and private sector clients navigate change within cities.

Projects include the Western Sydney Aerotropolis, Durban Aerotropolis, Ontario East Harbour Transit Hub, CLARA high speed rail master planning in Australia and peer review of the Dubai Waterfront City.

Skyportz is Australia’s leading vertiport developer, working with the property industry to establish new landing sites for electric air taxis which will soon be commercially operating.

“There is enormous interest from the property industry to help us break the nexus between aviation and airports”, said Skyportz CEO, Clem Newton-Brown.

“We are working with Governments, air regulators and communities to establish the parameters for the introduction of vertiport infrastructure and short take-off and landing runways.”.

“Having Mike on the team leading site selection for vertiports will be an important step to ensure that we are establishing vertiport networks that blend seamlessly into the built environment in a coherent, intuitive, and unobtrusive way.

Day said he was looking forward to the opportunity to partner with Skyportz and provide his expertise to this emerging industry.

“Making great places for people to live, work and play is complex,” said Day.

“The way we approach greenfield masterplanned communities is very different to urban renewal, but the aims are the same. We want to create compact, connected, mixed use places which people love and are accessible by all modes of sustainable transport. An important part of this is seamless transportation connections. The opportunity to add vertiports and advanced air mobility into our transport network in multi modal hubs is very exciting.”

In addition to assessing vertiport sites in Australia, Skyportz provides consultancy and master planning services globally as communities around the world gear up for this revolution in aviation.

Skyportz will be represented by CEO Clem Newton-Brown, Mike Day and micro-mobility expert, Mitchell Price at the LEAP conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this week where they will be co-presenting on the establishment of multi-modal transport hubs with Cezanne Maherali, director of public policy, Middle East and Africa, for Uber.