Sports Stadia and Urban Development: a Tale of Three Cities

Abstract

Pressure by civic leaders and sports entrepreneurs led St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Houston to build new sports stadia in the 1960s. The use of public money for private profit-making ventures generated controversy at the time but won acceptance with promises of widely dispersed benefits. This article argues that two long range trends, the Warner Model of urban development and the accumula tion of capital for private enterprise by the state, determined the nature of stadium building in these three cities and that those long range trends illumine the causes of current urban problems.