The Spatial Development of the Modern Stadium

Abstract

The British football stadium is an example of highly tcrritorialized space. In the past one hundred years the environment of football has changed from one of unenclosed, multi functional space with considerable spatial interaction among players and spectators (weak rules of exclusion) to enclosed, segmented and monofunctional space with impermeable boundaries and efficient surveillance of crowds (strong rules of exclusion). The analogy is drawn between the spatial changes in football space and Foucault's description of the growth of the prison. There has been considerable resistance to the confining of football space and in the early 1990s there are some indications that intra-stadium boundaries are "softening" and that "post-modern" tendencies might be emerging in the landscape of British football.