On May 22, at the 2025 Global Spatio Temporal Intelligence Conference (WGDC25) Low altitude Economic Forum, Ye Huping, Secretary General of the Key Laboratory of Low altitude Geographic Information and Air Route of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, gave a keynote speech on "Infrastructure Construction and Urban Opportunities of Low altitude Economic Air Route Network".
Ye Huping pointed out that airspace, as a resource, has both natural and economic attributes. Currently, there have been cases of low altitude airspace resource monetization transactions abroad, while the exploration of the economic attributes of airspace resources in China has just begun.
He predicts that in the future, aerial vehicles will show a diversified trend, mainly driven by electricity, and undergo large-scale development. Now it's distributed management, and in the future it will definitely be centralized management, efficient, flexible, and cost controllable, requiring new infrastructure
He stated that the development of low altitude economy also applies to the principle of "building roads before getting rich". Efficiently utilizing and developing low altitude airspace resources, planning low altitude public air route networks, and building infrastructure to support large-scale low altitude aircraft operations have become the starting options for the development of low altitude economy.
In his view, developing a low altitude road network will directly drive the efficient and safe operation of the low altitude economy, and promote the development of new related industries. Theoretical calculations show that developing a low altitude road network will have more social and economic benefits than building a traditional road network.
