A new sports stadium has an outsized impact on a city’s landscape and image of itself. Each stadium also plays a central role in media institutions, technologies, and culture as a catalyst for urban change and flashy neighborhood anchor, cornerstone of regional identity and purveyor of multimedia experiences. Helen Morgan Parmett analyzes sports stadiums in Atlanta, Seattle, and Minneapolis to demonstrate the role that media institutions, technologies, and culture play in sports and examine their impact on the urban landscape. These interconnected factors impact struggles over city space, identity, and urban governing. As Morgan Parmett shows, stadiums exist as more than just buildings and sporting places—they are central nodes in the city that connect, disconnect, and distribute resources, people, information, and, ultimately, power. Morgan Parmett demonstrates how the “sportification” of place is influenced by the specific histories, geography, and sporting cultures of a city while explaining their relationship to broader forces at work in media, sport, and urbanism. Original and incisive, Stadium City offers a beyond-the-playing-field analysis of sports stadiums and their impact on our cities and our lives.

Helen Morgan Parmett is the Edwin W. Lawrence Endowed Professor of Forensics and an associate professor of English at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Down in Treme: Race, Place, and New Orleans on Television.