The politics of urban regeneration in Liverpool and Everton FC’s alternate new stadium-project plans

Abstract

Urban politics is a US-dominated field, and since the late 1990s there have been academic discussions with a view, on the one hand, to better understanding the British/European case and what distinguishes it from the US one and, on the other, to develop a better comparative theory much of which subsequently went down the path of studying neoliberalism. This article follows an urban politics perspective and the qualitative case-study method to explore Everton Football Club’s 20-year-long unsuccessful struggle to relocate to a new modern stadium of its own in the Liverpool city-region. Although this paper has limitations stemming from the fact that it is a single case study, its contribution to the field is three-fold. First, it adds to the scant literature on new private sports stadia in the UK. Second, it shows that US-based urban politics theories beyond regimes may remain alive in the UK. Third, it supplements the neoliberalist–financialized city statecraft literature by adding sports stadia as infrastructural projects never before incorporated.