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The purpose of this chapter is to adopt and demonstrate the value of a political ecology approach in examining sport stadia, particularly stadia in the United States. We attempt to highlight how in the development of stadia key decision-makers sometimes overlook questions of community and environmental health and security.

We took an ontological approach in considering what it means for the stadium to exist in the current political ideological time period. For us, this meant raising questions about how we understand the varying human and nonhuman components of the stadium, and how they connect and influence one another. From there, we outline why political ecology is a useful framework for examining the environmental costs of stadia and their development. We utilize the city of Detroit's decision to provide funding for Little Caesars Arena – home to professional basketball and hockey competitions – to argue that investment in sport stadia creates environmental opportunity costs to the “host” community.

In the case of Detroit, we argue that private economic gain took precedence over community and environmental health and security when decisions were made on infrastructure. Specifically, despite the city going through bankruptcy and locking citizens out of water, the decision was made to provide millions of dollars for the construction of Little Caesars Arena and the development of the land immediately surrounding the arena. Through this, we suggest the need to produce informed case studies surrounding the environmental consideration.

The focus on community and environmental health and security is lacking from the discourse of stadia development in the United States. This chapter seeks to bring this consideration to the forefront by offering a way to examine these issues from a political ecological standpoint, and we urge researchers to conduct case studies using a political ecological framework with a community focus.

This chapter attempts to examine what lasting change the 2010 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup brought to the practices of “sport and development” in South Africa. It also discusses whose “rights to the city” were and were not promoted as a consequence of this mega-event.

A multiple case study approach was employed to look at: (1) what new initiatives have been launched and will be sustained after the event; (2) what the experience of existing initiatives was like; and (3) what structural changes might be brought about to promote the practices of “sport and development.” Semi-structured interviews and on-site observations were conducted in November 2010, looking at six “sport and development” initiatives operating in and around Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria.

As far as the experience of NGOs is concerned, positive changes were observable in terms of generating a more enabling climate for “sport and development,” although how long it will be sustained remains to be seen. The study shows that the World Cup provided opportunities for some new initiatives to start up, and also for relatively small existing ones to expand, while the experience of more established initiatives varied in terms of the extent of involvement in this one-off event.

These “positives” notwithstanding, the benefits tend to be limited to football-based practices, and potential “reach” into other areas of social development are questionable. Finally, it appeared that there was a mismatch between the beneficiaries of the programs and the victims of urban development.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the rationale for the public authorities’ direct interventions to realise benefits for the city and region of Glasgow acting as host city for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The methodology relies on an extensive literature review of the impact of large sporting and cultural events and of the evolution of the partnership approach to social and economic development and regeneration. One of the authors was critically involved in the construction of The Commonwealth Games legacy for Glasgow and so the chapter uses a participant researcher methodology.

The findings are consistent with the lessons from previous mega events as proposed following recent Olympic and Commonwealth Games and World Cups. The City Council was able to introduce a partnership approach which intervened to establish a viable legacy programme.

Research implications, as previous studies have argued, are of a need for evaluation of the legacy programme over a period of several years.

Practical implications follow from the success of the Glasgow Games which confirm the advantages of a partnership-based legacy programme being established early by the host city.

Social implications have been addressed over the short term by others and the longer term impacts of public sector interventions need to be analysed.

Originality/value of the chapter come from the description and assessment of the first legacy programme to be established before the event with wide stakeholder support.

While discourse abounds regarding the potential impacts of sports mega events on host cities, existing ideologies about, strategies for, and systematic examinations of “legacy” effects are poorly understood. This chapter presents a sociological examination of the sport mega-event legacy measurement process.

In this chapter, we reflect on our own involvement in legacy evaluation in the context of the 2015 Pan/Parapan Am Games in Toronto to examine existing legacy measurement strategies, review their findings, and present a theoretical detour via the past for consideration in future sociological contributions to the legacy measurement process.

Data discussed in this chapter suggest a need for the creation of a more sociologically informed, methodologically robust and piecemeal rather than Utopian-oriented “report card” measurement device for legacy evaluation.

Based on the review of evidence, we contend that if sociologists of sport remain committed to keeping their roles, as public intellectuals, applied researchers or participatory activists in the sport for development/legacy nexus, those involved might do so with a greater attention to focusing on what Karl Popper (1961) refers to as piecemeal social engineering strategies and measurements, and attending to those legacies both on and off the event organizing committee radar screen.