Politics is nothing new to Washington, D.C., even in the arena marked with base paths and outfield grass. The stadium for the expansion Washington Nationals baseball team cost over $600 million and while opponents decried the waste of taxpayer money, supporters promised the stadium would stimulate economic development. Land swaps, closed-door deals, and valuable parking-lot strategies were as complex as any game plan employed on the diamond. The district's past stadiums, tracks and Olympics facilities are archived and described in this history, along with their political backdrops. The book features numerous drawings and photographs.
This book critically presents the mechanisms and structures in a selection of sport federations within a variety of European countries that illuminate the varied relationships between not-for-profit sport federations, their members, governments and the citizens they represent.
This groundbreaking Research Handbook adeptly navigates how gender and diversity are addressed in sport management. Offering insight into practices and processes that work to exclude certain groups and practices, and favour others, it highlights how gendered ways of organizing sport are experienced and may be sustained, disrupted, and challenged.
The Foundation of Australia’s Capital Cities is the story of how the places chosen for Australia’s seven colonial capitals came to shape their unique urban character and built environments. Tony Webster traces the effects of each city’s geologically diverse coastal or riverine landform and the local natural materials that were available for construction, highlighting how the geology and original landforms resulted in development patterns that have persisted today.
Washington DC isn't celebrated for basketball. But the Washington area stands second to none in its contributions to the game. Countless figures who have had a significant impact on the sport over the years have roots in the region, including E.B. Henderson, the first African-American certified to teach physical education in public schools in the United States and Earl Lloyd, the first African-American to take the court in an actual NBA game. The District of Columbia's Spingarn High School produced two players - Elgin Baylor and Dave Bing - that are recognized among the NBA's 50 greatest at the League's 50th anniversary celebration. No other high school in the country can make that claim. These figures and many others who have been a part of Washington's basketball past are chronicled in this book, the first-ever comprehensive look at the great high school players, teams and accomplishments in the DC metropolitan area. Based on more than 150 interviews, The Capital of Basketball is first and foremost a book about basketball. But in discussing the trends and evolution of the game, the books also uncovers the turmoil in the lives of the players and area residents as they dealt with issues such as prejudice, education, politics, and the ways the area has changed through the years.
Sport and architecture are two elements of contemporary life that have a broad and profound impact on the world around us. The role architecture plays in shaping buildings and societies has occupied historians for centuries. Likewise, the cultural, economic, and political importance of sport is the subject of sustained academic inquiry. When sport and architecture converge, as in the 2012 London Olympics or the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, then the impact of these two forms of social activity is redoubled. This book presents a new and dynamic study of the complex relationship between sport and architecture. It explores the history of sport architecture and examines the buildings and events that create sites where sport and architecture converge in particularly telling ways. Its chapters discuss the following topics: sport architecture and urban redevelopment sport architecture and technology sport architecture and nationalism sport architecture as social activism sport architecture and global capitalism. By considering the importance of architectural form alongside these key themes, this book represents a landmark study for anybody interested in the social and cultural significance of architecture or sport.
From the legendary Ebbets Field in the heart of Brooklyn to the amenity-packed Houston Astrodome to the "retro" Oriole Park at Camden Yards, stadiums have taken many shapes and served different purposes throughout the history of American sports culture. In the early twentieth century, a new generation of stadiums arrived, located in the city center, easily accessible to the public, and offering affordable tickets that drew mixed crowds of men and women from different backgrounds. But in the successive decades, planners and architects turned sharply away from this approach. In Modern Coliseum, Benjamin D. Lisle tracks changes in stadium design and culture since World War II. These engineered marvels channeled postwar national ambitions while replacing aging ballparks typically embedded in dense urban settings. They were stadiums designed for the "affluent society"—brightly colored, technologically expressive, and geared to the car-driving, consumerist suburbanite. The modern stadium thus redefined one of the city's more rambunctious and diverse public spaces. Modern Coliseum offers a cultural history of this iconic but overlooked architectural form. Lisle grounds his analysis in extensive research among the archives of teams, owners, architects, and cities, examining how design, construction, and operational choices were made. Through this approach, we see modernism on the ground, as it was imagined, designed, built, and experienced as both an architectural and a social phenomenon. With Lisle's compelling analysis supplemented by over seventy-five images documenting the transformation of the American stadium over time, Modern Coliseum will be of interest to a variety of readers, from urban and architectural historians to sports fans.
