City Growth

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Orlando and Conspicuous Growth
by:
Samuel D. Bates
Research Chair:
Prof. Jessica Jacques

City Growth

2
Abstract

City growth is a phenomenon that impacts everyone. Individuals suffer from the waste of
factories overseas in developing countries. Everyone is touched by growth. This is problematic
when regions build structures as symbols of status. In the Fall of 2014, Orlando, Fl. built a
controversial stadium on top of a poverty ridden area. This research proposal is in response to
that stadium. It will be a study of both primary and secondary. The theories used in this study fall
under either symbolic interaction, or structural functionalism. Using multiple theories helps to
examine concepts from various perspectives, thus helping explore the arguments of if the new
soccer stadium Orlando wishes to build is Conspicuous Consumption; or is the stadium a result
of inevitable growth. This research will examine the social forces that are present in Orlando,
and compare them to social forces that are present in other cities. These variables will help
determine potential success of the Orlando Soccer Stadium.

Introduction
The concept of rational capitalism caused a drastic change in behavior in the way social
groups interact. Before capitalism, people were born into rich families, or not born into rich
families. Crossing the line from one end of the spectrum to the other was rare. The ratio of rich
families to poor families was fewer than today. With the concept of capitalism came the
possibility for anyone to make money. Fast forward a few hundred years and the result is fierce
competition among different groups. The case of a the new Orlando Soccer Stadium (OSS) is a
prime example of money and growth. A new stadium means growth, and one of the ideas
Moloch raises in his research is that cities either grow or diminish, they rarely stay stagnant. This
article will examine the NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) attitude as well as various other theories
on growth in regard to the OSS.
The NIMBY idea is relatively basic. It says that the majority of people like growth, and
like having things to do in their free time conspicuous leisure as Veblen would say but they
do not like these extra activities impacting their home life. Past case studies have been done
examining the negative consequences of building a sports stadium. The idea is that sports
stadiums are good because they promote growth. As stated before, and will be elaborated more
in the literature review section, the nature of capitalism requires growth. Soccer stadiums bring
tourists who spend money. At first glance, it seems great. There are several unintended
consequences that must be taken into consideration. This paper will: examine various arguments
on growth, present a research design that will examine demographics, use secondary data, and do
a content analysis of news reports and eventually come to a conclusion offering a verdict if
building sports stadiums is the best method for Orlando to keep up with the growth of other
cities.

Literature Review
The growing city seams great in theory, however, there are several unintended
consequences that accompany growth. Some growth becomes conspicuous consumption, as
Veblen talks about in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). These consequences can
have detrimental repercussions on various groups of people. John Logan & Harvey Molotch
write that these repercussions are because of competing groups (2013). The powerful groups are

City Growth

referred to "group members" described in their work(2011). David Whitson and Donald
Macintosh did research on the benefits and negative impacts sports and tourism. In 2013, Peter
Gordon did research in the driving factors that cause cities to grow. A team of mathematicians:
Raul Bertero, Alejandro Lehmann, Joun Mussat, and Sebastion Vasquero researched how sound
works to show the mechanics of why it is undesirable to live near a stadium. This results in
poverty areas around stadiums. This is a form of environmental injustice, or NIMBY.
Peter Gordon believed that before growth could be talked about, a knowledge of the history
of growth is necessary. Steven Landsburg (2007) wrote in one of his journals that for most of
history, as far as the history of human kind is concerned, most people lived the same way. A part
from the very few wealthy individuals, in American dollars, most people lived in the fourhundred to six-hundred dollar salary range. With the spirit of capitalism came a lot of people
making significantly more money much faster than ever before. In modern economies, most
people work less and make more than ever before. The idea that people were making more
money, and having more leisure time forced the cities to grow to keep up with the demand of
more free time and more money. Now that more people had money, they all wanted to expand to
make more profits, or expand to have more things to do. This creates a conflict of interest among
different groups of people.
Moloch talks a lot about various groups competing for power. He does this through his idea
that the city is a growth machine. This is one of the things that feeds the growth of the city. Each
of these groups believes that growth is a good thing. Because each group believes growth is good
they all try to expand which results in competition among the groups. It is a similar concept to
Buttle's Treadmill of Production (2004). Members of the growth machine have the ideology that
citizens should take pride in the fact that their city is growing regardless of how the growth
impacts the urban areas (Molotch). Peter Gordon wrote his interpretation of what economists
mean when they call cities "engines of growth". People move to cities with the intension of
obtaining resources to try out ideas in the business world. They come to cities and start their
ideas using other people's ideas. Other people move to the city and collaborate their ideas with
the first person's ideas. It becomes a group of entrepreneurs that grow, thus making the city grow
and contributing to the city as a growth machine. The idea of growth is substantial to the point of
undermining the local community.
David Whitson and Donald Macintosh did a research project to portray that the goods of
growth are rarely evenly distributed among citizens. This uneven distribution of goods is
manifested in both location of growth, clientele, and changes in property value. Whitson and
Macintosh use the Olympics as one of their prime examples. Hosting the Olympics is a status
symbol that recognizes that city as a "world-class city" (1996). Another argument for the goods
of growth is rooted in the work by Noll and Zimbalist (2001). Noll and Zimbalist wrote about the
reasoning cities use to justify building a new stadium in their article Sports in Contemporary
Society:
First, building a the facility creates construction jobs. Second, people who attend the
games or work for the team generate new spending in the community, expanding local
employment. Third, a team attracts tourists and companies to the host city, further
increasing and local spending and jobs. Finally, all this new spending has a "multiplier
effect" as increased local income causes still more spending and job creation (248).
Tourism and sports are the two big things that cities strive for. When combined, these two things

City Growth

are a powerful force of profit. Unfortunately, all the profit is concentrated to a single stadium and
a few stores and hotels near the stadium. Noll and Zimbalist found that growth happens when the
core of a city becomes more productive. It takes more than a sports team to generate revenue for
the city. The land, the community, and the resources of the city all need to become more
productive to generate profit. Concentrating a massive amount of business to one area does more
harm than good. This in turn hurts the local businesses, the sporting events draw in the locals,
causing the small businesses to hurt.
Adam Zaretsky gives an explanation of how stadiums should be funded. Cities should
never fund the construction of stadiums because of the slow profit the country receives in return.
It is a public good, however, the city rarely makes significant revenue. Research by Gans (2010)
found that the old financing tactic to finance new stadiums was tax increases, the newest tactic is
an increase in ticket prices. Arguments for using tax money stems from the vast amount of tax
revenue that comes from each game. Taxes on food, merchandise, hotels, and transportation are
all related to each game. This poses ethical questions because it forces people who are not
involved with any sports to pay for the stadium. Even most patrons of the stadium agree that
regardless of the state of the economy, tax money should be spent elsewhere.
This study examines a soccer stadium in Orlando that the people in power wish to build,
this is far from the first case of this type of action. Charles Tu (2005) did a case study on the
building of the FedEx Field on the Potomac Yard near Washington D.C. Potomac Yard is an
abandoned train yard. As stated before, the city tries to build such stadiums because they become
symbols of status. Koehler finds in his study that residents rarely want these types of structures
near their home (2012). This is the NIMBY argument. Koehler disagrees with past ideas that
building stadiums brings economic development. Sports teams are in high demand, if one city
does not want to pay for a team, the team will simply go to a city that will pay. A consequence of
this is that a team may potentially cost money. Charles Tu has an alternate belief about growth.
Tu's case study in Washington portrayed that sports centers raise property values. Tu found that
anything located two or more miles away from a stadium is not affected by property value
changes. Property values less than a two mile radius from the stadium drop roughly ten percent
in value. Koehler makes an argument that growth is bad because the types of jobs it creates do
not help the middle class. Tu critiques this ideology by saying that the types of people that live in
the area of a new stadium usually need a second or third minimum wage job.
The effect college football has on the local economy is generally mixed, and remains an
area of fascination among researchers (Baade, R. A., Baumann, R. W., & Matheson, V. A.,
2008). The idea of a new stadium often appears beneficial, but city planners rarely consider what
economists call the "substitution effect", which refers to consumers spending money at a game as
opposed to spending money in another venue in the local economy. It is the idea that sports
stadiums do not generate revenue, they just move revenue. The researchers Baade, Baumann, &
Matheson found little correlation between college football and the city's economic prosperity.
The idea that sports games only move revenue from one venue to another has the worst impacts
on small towns. Big cities are generally big enough that they can survive a big game day, small
towns have less resources and less clientele, therefore, a big game day hurts small towns more
than bigger cities. As seen in the literature review, a vast amount of research has been completed
on sports and revenue. There are limited case studies. A goal of this research is to contribute to
the case studies of specific cities as the stadium is constructed.

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Theoretical Framework
Veblen and Moloch both talk about wealth as symbols. Veblen built his career out of what
he calls "conspicuous consumption" (1899). Moloch wrote about how once a city starts growing,
it has to keep expanding. There is no middle level, either the city is growing or shrinking. This
study will use a combination of these two theorists and try to make an argument for the city of
Orlando, Fl. Snow wrote in one of his articles that Herbert Blumer built off older theorists and
constructed the idea of symbolic interaction (2001). Conspicuous consumption is using money to
buy visible symbols of wealth. If an individual performs this, it is the individual purchasing and
wearing an expensive article of clothing, or an expensive vehicle. A city has more significant
purchases it needs to make in order to achieve a symbol of wealth or status. Whitson and
Macintosh wrote about such purchases--in the case of Orlando, Fl.--a soccer stadium. Moloch
wrote about competing interest groups. The families living on Paramour have an interest to keep
their way of live, city officials, the ones in power, have an interest to grow.
The soccer stadium will be viewed as a purchase to symbolize wealth, status, and power.
Molochs idea will be applied examining if how much of a choice Orlando had in the purchase of
a soccer stadium. There is the idea that city officials could have denied the stadium, however,
that may have been preventing potential growth. Finally, Durkheims theory will examine the
social goods that rise out of this type of growth and the function of such purchases in a society.

Methodology
The ideal research design is a multi-method study consisting of both primary and
secondary data, surveys, interviews, and a content analysis of various news articles. There is a
plethora of information in the General Service Survey (GSS) and STATES10 data pertaining to
the citizens living in poverty. A survey will be developed and implemented through qualtrics
using various social media sites and email. This will ensure anonymity. At the end of the survey,
participants will be given the option to leave their contact information. The participants will be
contacted and an interview will be set up. The interview will consist of several open ended
questions. The content analysis of the research will collect news articles written about the
Orlando soccer stadium and look for emergent themes.
The first section of the study is an analysis of secondary data. Both the GSS and the
STATES10 data have a large number of variables about poverty and views of poverty. The first
section of the research design analyzes all the information pertaining to poverty in the two
databases. It will examine the following variables: poverty levels, income levels, various age
groups living in poverty, socioeconomic prestige score, welfare, social security, and personal
income. This research is the study of the repercussions of city expansion on a poverty
neighborhood. The secondary data will give the research a base understanding of empirical
poverty before a study on a specific area is completed.
The next section will use a survey. The ideal survey will be a cross-sectional design
distributed around the Orlando area using various social media sites. The survey will be divided
into sections. The first section will ask about ideologies on poverty. The next set of questions
will refer to knowledge of unintended consequences of city growth. The last set of questions
refer to sports and ideas of living in what David Whitson and Donald Macintosh refer to as a
"World-class city" (1996). The survey will end with an option to be contacted for a in-depth

City Growth

interview. The interview will be a phenomenology study. The survey allows answers to be
analyzed statistically. The phenomenology study allows a participant to be asked an open-ended
question such as "what do you believe are the benefits of Orlando building the OSS?". He/she
can answer while the interviewer takes notes. The researcher will eventually read over all the
responses and look for emergent themes. After the interviewing process, all contact information
leading to the participant will be destroyed to maintain anonymity.
An important aspect of the research is looking at other cities. As stated in the literature
review, most of the time when a city builds a stadium, or any symbol of status, it does not create
remarkable revenue. It just moves everything around. An aspect of this study is looking for the
cities that a stadium has created revenue. Once these cities have been identified, the same
surveys and interviews will be distributed around said cities. The object is to see if Orlando has
the same social forces as other cities that benefit from stadiums.
The research will allow a conclusion to be made assessing the citizens views of if Orlando
needs another stadium. It will focus on a specific area, but will try to include all locals in the
study. The news reports say that the people in Paramour do not want the stadium. This is clearly
the NIMBY argument. What about the city as a whole? Does a city that already has symbols of
wealth and prestige need more? Based on the guidelines other cities have put into place, does
Orlando meet all the demographic needs to have a successful soccer stadium? The research is not
to pose a solution to the negative consequences of building, but to ask if the stadium is the best
option for growth in Orlando.
After this is completed, Orlando will be compared with other cities who have built a
stadium as a status symbol. Some cities have been successful using stadiums as assets to the
growth machine. Many other cities have not been successful in their attempt to build a
stadium.This article will analyze the results of this study and compare it with what past
researchers have found as the themes of success when referring to stadiums that have been built.
As the research continues, the questions this study seeks to answer may transform. The questions
hypothesizes will be developed further as the survey, interview, and content analysis are
developed. At this point, the research will examine the following hypothesizes:
(IV- independent variable, DV dependent variable)
H1

IV-Orlando has the characteristics to have a successful stadium.

DV- The predicted success of the stadium.
Ho= Orlando will benefit from the soccer stadium.
Ha= Orlando will not benefit from the soccer stadium.

H2

IV- Citizens ideas on the soccer stadium.

DV- If the citizens want the soccer stadium.
Ho= The majority of citizens do not want a soccer stadium.
Ha= The majority of citizens do want a soccer stadium.

H3

IV- Location of the stadium.

DV- People want the stadium, but in a different area of the city.
Ho= The majority of people do not want the soccer stadium.

City Growth

Ha= The majority of people want the soccer stadium but disagree on the location.
H4

IV- Respondents age.

DV- Their views on the new stadium.
Ho= The people who want the stadium will be adults aged 22 and older.
Ha= The people who want the stadium will be aged 21 and younger.

H5

IV-Success of other cities.

DV- The profits from the stadium in other cities.
Ho= Orlando has the characteristics to have a successful stadium.
Ha= Orlando does not have the characteristics to have a successful stadium.

The research will use SPSS and test the hypothesizes. A correlation test will examine if there is
a correlation between variables, and if needed, the variables will be recoded and a regression test
will be performed. This will allow for further examination of a negative or positive relationship
between variables. The regression test will also tell how strong the relationship is.

Conclusion
This research will try to make the argument that the new soccer stadium is conspicuous
consumption. It will use various ideas from Moloch and after the research, try to make a
conclusion of how much of a choice the city had when offered a soccer stadium. The research
will examine potential unintended consequences that may accompany this type of growth. The
paper will determine if the location is the best location for the city's needs. It will examine how
Orlando plans to finance the stadium and what the perceived belief is around the community.
The study will examine all these variables and present the information being as objective as
possible.

City Growth
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