Bulls Markets
The 1990s were a glorious time for the Chicago Bulls, an age of historic championships and all-time basketball greats like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan. It seemed only fitting that city, county, and state officials would assist the team owners in constructing a sparkling new venue to house this incredible team that was identified worldwide with Chicago. That arena, the United Center, is the focus of Bulls Markets, an unvarnished look at the economic and political choices that forever reshaped one of America's largest cities--arguably for the worse.
Sean Dinces shows how the construction of the United Center reveals the fundamental problems with neoliberal urban development. The pitch for building the arena was fueled by promises of private funding and equitable revitalization in a long blighted neighborhood. However, the effort was funded in large part by municipal tax breaks that few ordinary Chicagoans knew about, and that wound up exacerbating the rising problems of gentrification and wealth stratification. In this portrait of the construction of the United Center and the urban life that developed around it, Dinces starkly depicts a pattern of inequity that has become emblematic of contemporary American cities: governments and sports franchises collude to provide amenities for the wealthy at the expense of poorer citizens, diminishing their experiences as fans and--far worse--creating an urban environment that is regulated and surveilled for the comfort and protection of that same moneyed elite.
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About the Author
A native of Southern California, I did a brief stint in the Navy after high school and eventually completed my M.A. in Urban Education Policy and Ph.D. in American Studies at Brown University. I wrote my doctoral dissertation under the supervision of urban historians Elliott Gorn and Robert Self, urban sociologist John Logan, and urban planning expert Larry Bennett. I am currently an Associate Professor of History at Long Beach City College. I previously taught urban history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My research interests include the history of the sports business, the growth (and decline) of U.S. cities after World War II, and economic inequality in general. The University of Chicago press published my first book, Bulls Markets: Chicago’s Basketball Business and the New Inequality, in 2018. I spend most of my spare time reading and playing in the ocean. My favorite writers include Barbara Ehrenreich, Ha Jin, Adolph Reed, Jr., Gore Vidal, and Kurt Vonnegut.
You can learn more about Bulls Markets and my other work at www.seandinces.com.