Comment by pixl97

This is how almost all airports built in the last 50 years have worked. They were built way outside the cities. The cities grew to the airports.

More so, because of strong property rights it's very difficult to stop any development near the airports at all. The airport would have to buy up hundreds of square miles of land to prevent it at a staggering cost.

Lastly, one of the buildings that was hit was the UPS warehouse that stored goods to load on the plane. You want that as close as possible to the airport. Though right at the end of the runway is not the greatest place.