To set the tone: my setting is semi-hard, with actual reality holding until it runs into something I prefer that works another way because Rule of Cool or flavour.

So, we're looking at a non-Earth habitable world of significant development; it's a sector capital with all the headaches, trade connections, and other factors that implies. Orbital infrastructure is dense and significant. In particular we are examining one specific city, this being Novy Danzig, which plays host to both a space elevator and a spaceport.

The beanstalk's starside end goes directly into an orbital docking and cargo handling facility, mainly seeing large bulk freighters come to dock to load and unload cargo. Close as it is to Novy Danzig, the elevator is the best (if not precisely fastest) way to get cargo topside and closer to an outgoing hull.

The spaceport handles shuttles and smaller spacecraft, the ones that settle in the thin overlap between 'capable of planetary landing' and 'FTL-capable'. This also sees significant traffic, largely shuttle traffic up into orbit, as Novy Danzig is the closest port to where the sector government has established itself. Being as my research indicates the ride up or down takes about two to two and a half days (I haven't messed with that part yet), a shuttle would be much faster (and save you two bloody days of straight elevator music urgh).

The question I'm mulling over right now is: Should I combine these two facilities, or leave them separate? I'm fine with either, but I want to get more opinions.

Here's what I have so far:

Combine:

• Less hassle; since it's all one spaceport, cargo and passenger routing only needs to go to one destination
• Budget savings because there's fewer buildings to put up

Separate:

• You have a hideously long uppy-and-downy thing that gets in the way of flight paths. Not immediately, hideously, or hilariously fatal for anyone unless they were trying, but still a notable annoyance to aerospace traffic.
• Combining the two means it's more difficult to expand in a particular direction; a new warehouse may have to be awkwardly placed and inconvenient to access because of the spaceport terminal in the way
• An accident affecting one side of operations will shut the other down unless there's real damn good reason for the other side to stay in operations.

What's your opinion?

Edit: Fixed bulleting.