Joyce Hackett of New York suggests redesigning our airports:

Berlin's Tegel Airport is built like a big ring—planes on the outside, drivers and parking in the middle. Its individually secured gates make it both the most efficient and the most security-effective airport I've experienced. You drive past a board that says what gate your flight's at, then into the inner loop, straight to your gate. Each is a separate, secured area with its own passport, customs, and security control. (On arrival, your gate has its individual baggage belt). Departing passengers walk 20 feet from taxi to pass control; agents handle one set of passengers, for a single flight, at a time. There's no bottleneck. Screeners are under far less pressure and can afford to be thorough in a way the screeners at JFK just can't. Yet it's far faster for passengers than any American airport.