Sporting events attract hundreds of millions of people each year. Just as importantly, however, the venues that host these events are often planned as cultural and economic backbones of the communities in which they are located, potentially leading to the creation or regeneration of entire neighborhoods. However, the investment in sports infrastructure alone is not a guarantee of successful social and economic redevelopment.

​

We believe much of the discussion about the impact of sports venues is too binary to reflect the full range of benefits that large-scale facilities can bring. We also believe to little attention is paid to the significant impact that true mixed-use sports districts can bring. All too often, the discussion is reduced to the following: How much will it cost, and how much tax revenue will I get from the venue itself? However, these questions do not address many of the reasons why these venues are so valuable in the first place. Sports venues can help create dynamic, mixed-use environments that yield tremendous economic dividends, community benefits, and real estate opportunities— impacts that extend far beyond the typical tax revenue analysis.

​

At Stadia Lab we have developed innovative analytical methodologies to measure the social economic impacts of these facilities. Our methodologies rely on big data analyses to offer insights about urban space patterns of usage after the construction of a sports facility. By combining sports architecture and computer science it is possible to accurately map human interaction with environments around sports arenas, generating parametric multidimensional models that can pinpoint both successful and failed aspects of design, creating groundbreaking new ways to model and understand urban landscapes, essentially proving or disproving with hard data what good or bad urban design means, what people are naturally attracted to, and how they interact with the spaces adjacent to these buildings.

​

Effectively, we envision that the success of a sports facility at any scale requires a careful and detailed analysis of its urban context, to comprehend in which ways these buildings would be able to become an anchor for socio-economic growth. Therefore, it is our goal to provide a new understanding about the urban impact of sports-related architecture and urban design, revealing unexplored economic opportunities and amplifying the legacy to be achieved by sports in their local communities.