1SPORTS STADIA AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT: A TALE OF THREE CITIES

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. When civic leaders in St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Houston decided to support construction of new sports stadia in their cities in the 1960s, their concerns went far beyond the desire to improve facilities for baseball and football games. The mass popularity of sports and the close relationship between civic identity and local teams made construction of sports facilities an important tool for promoting public and private spending aimed at solving problems of civic development. In each city the manner of financing and the method of locating the stadium responded to the local legacy of urban history. Consequently, public debates about stadium buildin