ARTICLE Sports and the city Natalie Koch Department of Geography, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University Correspondence Natalie Koch, Department of Geography, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 144 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA. Email: nkoch@maxwell.syr.edu Abstract This article reviews how sport has been engaged in urban geogra- phy and related fields. Across the social sciences, there has been an explosion of research on “sporting mega‐events,” such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup. While much of this scholarship has examined the effects of these events for cities and city resi- dents, I emphasize a longer and deeper history of research on sports and the city. I trace three lines of inquiry to illuminate the broader state of the field: (1) sport, (post)colonialism, and moder- nity; (2) sports, identity, and belonging in the city; and (3) sport, neoliberalism, and urban transformation. Not limited to the work of geographers, this review considers important overlaps between sports geography, urban geography, and a number of other disci- plines. I suggest that sports studies has just as much to offer urban geography as the other way around, and in closing, I point to some key directions that might deepen urban geographers' contribution to the interdisciplinary research on sport, as well as critical approaches to urbanism. 1 | INTRODUCTION Sports geography is not a large subfield. Many geographers may generally be aware of its existence, but few claim to be “sports geographers.” Sport is a recurring theme in the discipline, however, and, when one stops to look for it, it is clear that geographers are producing some excellent research by taking sport seriously. Due to the longtime margin- alization of the topic in geography, scholars of sport often position their research to speak to the discipline's more mainstream subfields (Koch, 2017). The resulting cross‐fertilizations can be quite rich, which I illustrate through the case of sport and the city. Urban geographers are likely familiar with the explosion of research on sporting “mega‐ events,” but there is far more research on sports and the city than is reflected in the narrow debates about the politics and legacies of mega‐events. This article reviews how sport has been engaged in urban studies by focusing on three broad themes: (1) sport, (post)colonialism, and modernity; (2) sports, identity, and belonging in the city; and (3) sport, neoliberalism, and urban transformation. Since I cannot exhaustively cover the wide‐ranging intersections between “sport” and “the city”—both terms themselves taking on an incredibly diverse set of meanings when explored at different scales and kinds of ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2018 The Author(s) Geography Compass © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Received: 14 August 2017 Revised: 21 November 2017 Accepted: 6 December 2017 DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12360 Geography Compass. 2018;12:e12360. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12360 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gec3 1 of 14