BLACK SOOT: Why Port Harcourt’s air matters—and what can be done

BLACK SOOT
Why Port Harcourt’s air matters—and what can be done

Figure 1. Early-morning haze over Port Harcourt: the visible face of a complex air-pollution problem. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

THE BIG IDEA  Soot is more than dirt on a surface. Fine combustion particles can enter deep into the lungs. The pollution has several possible sources, so lasting solutions require measurement, enforcement, cleaner energy, safer livelihoods, and public accountability.

 

StoryMap author: Eniola Ore  •  December 4, 2022

Academic supervision: Prof. Gervais Wafo Tabopda, Georgia Institute of Technology

Citizen-paper adaptation: August 2026

 

A city waking up under black dust

Since late 2016, residents of Port Harcourt and nearby communities have reported black particles settling on floors, windows, cars, plants, bed linen—and sometimes on children’s hands and feet. The deposits are especially noticeable in the morning. What looks like ordinary dust may contain particles produced by incomplete combustion of petroleum and other fuels.

Figure 2. Soot deposition on a resident’s hand makes the exposure visible, but what cannot be seen may be even more important. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

What does “soot” mean?

Three terms are often mixed together. They are related, but they are not identical:

Term	Plain-language meaning
PM₂.₅	Particles no wider than 2.5 micrometres. They can travel deep into the lungs and are the main health indicator used in many air-quality studies.
Soot	A dark mixture formed by incomplete burning. Its composition changes with the fuel and combustion conditions.
Black carbon	A light-absorbing carbon component of soot. It affects health and also warms the climate.
WHY PRECISION MATTERS  A map of PM₂.₅ is not automatically a map of black carbon. Scientists need to identify exactly what was measured, how it was measured, and over what period.

 

Where is the problem?

Port Harcourt sits in the oil-producing Niger Delta. The city is linked to creeks, pipelines, industrial areas, roads, settlements, and flare sites. Wind and the height of the atmospheric mixing layer determine where pollutants travel and where they accumulate. Calm, stable early-morning air can keep pollution closer to the ground.

Figure 3. Gas flares and footprint locations in the Niger Delta. The pattern is useful for identifying possible source areas, but proximity alone does not prove causation. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

Figure 4. A closer view of flare locations and footprints near Port Harcourt. Wind direction, flare performance, and other emission sources must be considered when interpreting the map. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

READING A MAP CAREFULLY  Maps reveal patterns and help ask better questions. To prove which source caused pollution at a neighborhood, scientists also need ground monitors, chemical fingerprints, weather data, and atmospheric models.

 

 

Where can the soot come from?

Figure 5. An artisanal or illegal crude-oil refining operation. Incomplete combustion can release thick smoke and fine particles. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

The StoryMap points to artisanal refining and activity near waterways. Scientific studies agree that petroleum combustion is an important concern, but Port Harcourt’s air is affected by several overlapping sources:

·   artisanal refining and open burning of petroleum products;

·   gas flaring, refineries, petrochemical plants, asphalt works, and other industry;

·   diesel and petrol generators used during unreliable electricity supply;

·   cars, minibuses, trucks, and poorly maintained engines;

·   burning of tyres, waste, biomass, and materials used in some abattoirs; and

·   open destruction of seized crude oil, tankers, or makeshift refining equipment.

What research tells us

A 2017 atmospheric study modeled pollution moving from areas south and southwest of Port Harcourt and found episode concentrations reaching 180 µg/m³ under selected conditions. A 2019 study of gas flaring showed that flare size, combustion efficiency, wind, and atmospheric stability strongly influence ground-level black carbon. These studies support action—but they also show why no single map can explain every pollution episode.

 

What can soot do to health?

Figure 6. A public-awareness collage used in the StoryMap to communicate possible health effects. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

Fine particles can irritate the airways and worsen asthma. Long-term exposure to PM₂.₅ is linked internationally with heart and lung disease, stroke, lung cancer, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and premature death. People with asthma, heart disease, or chronic lung disease are more vulnerable. Children, older adults, pregnant people, outdoor workers, and people without access to filtration may face greater risk.

HEALTH BENCHMARK  The World Health Organization’s 2021 guideline for PM₂.₅ is 5 µg/m³ as an annual average and 15 µg/m³ as a 24-hour average. These are health-protection goals, not a dividing line between “safe” and “dangerous.” Comparisons must use the same averaging period.

 

What is known locally?

Port Harcourt studies have reported high particulate levels, morning peaks, and metals—including nickel, chromium, cadmium, and lead—in collected soot. A 2026 systematic review of 21 Niger Delta observational studies found possible links between oil- and gas-related pollution and respiratory symptoms, asthma, reduced lung function, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and hypertension. The authors judged the certainty as low to moderate because studies measured exposure and health outcomes in different ways.

What this means for citizens

The health concern is credible and prevention is justified. At the same time, scientists should avoid claiming that a particular illness was caused by a particular soot source without appropriate exposure and medical evidence.

The environment also carries the burden

Figure 7. Soot deposited on vegetation. Surface deposition is visible evidence that pollutants move from air to land and water. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

Particles can settle on leaves, roofs, soils, creeks, rainwater collection systems, and household surfaces. Soot can reduce visibility and block some sunlight from reaching leaves. Chemical components may enter soil, sediment, and water. The StoryMap also reports “black rain,” crop damage, and declines in fish and crabs.

A SCIENTIFIC CAUTION  Those ecological observations deserve investigation, but soot is not the only pressure on the Niger Delta. Oil spills, wastewater, habitat loss, dredging, salinity changes, and other contamination can also affect fish, crops, and waterways. Good studies compare polluted and reference sites over time.

 

Figure 8. Images of smoke, haze, and black rain illustrate how the pollution is experienced in everyday life. Source: Eniola Ore (2022), ArcGIS StoryMap. Original image credit is not specified in the StoryMap.

 

What government and industry should do

1. Measure and publish

·   Operate a quality-assured network with at least one reference-grade monitor and well-calibrated lower-cost sensors.

·   Publish validated hourly readings, health advisories, missing-data flags, methods, and annual trends.

·   Sample PM₂.₅ filters for black carbon, metals, ions, and petroleum-related organic compounds to identify sources.

2. Stop pollution at the source

·   End open burning of seized crude oil and equipment; use secure recovery and controlled treatment.

·   Meter gas flaring, verify flare efficiency, enforce deadlines, detect leaks, and capture or use associated gas.

·   Control industrial stacks, tyre and waste burning, smoky vehicles, and high-emitting generators.

·   Improve reliable electricity and clean transport so families and businesses do not depend on dirty combustion.

3. Protect health now

·   Issue clear alerts for high-pollution days and prepare clinics, schools, and workplaces.

·   Create clean-air rooms using correctly sized HEPA filtration and prioritize vulnerable households and institutions.

·   Provide well-fitting N95/FFP2 masks during severe episodes; ordinary cloth masks do not reliably filter fine particles.

·   Track asthma attacks, respiratory visits, cardiovascular events, pregnancy outcomes, and school absences while protecting privacy.

4. Make enforcement fair and durable

·   Target organizers, financing, stolen-oil supply chains, and dangerous facilities—not only low-income workers.

·   Pair enforcement with safe livelihoods, remediation jobs, skills training, and reliable legal energy supplies.

·   Include waterfront communities in sensor placement, reporting, enforcement priorities, and evaluation.

 

What residents can do

FIRST PRIORITY  Reduce exposure when pollution is visibly severe or official readings are high. Personal action cannot replace government and industrial responsibility, but it can lower short-term risk.

 

Helpful actions

Actions to avoid

·   Follow trusted air-quality alerts. ·   Keep windows closed during intense smoke episodes when feasible. ·   Use a HEPA air cleaner or a correctly fitted filter system; replace filters as recommended. ·   Wear a well-fitting N95/FFP2 when outdoor exposure cannot be avoided. ·   Seek medical care for severe breathlessness, chest pain, blue lips, confusion, or worsening asthma. ·   Document repeated pollution events with date, time, location, weather, and photographs.

·   Do not burn collected soot, rubbish, tyres, or petroleum waste. ·   Do not use ozone-producing air cleaners. ·   Do not assume a surgical or cloth mask provides the same protection as a respirator. ·   Do not rely on smell or visibility alone—fine particles may remain high when the air looks clearer. ·   Do not stop prescribed asthma or heart medicines without clinical advice.

Questions citizens can ask

·   Where is the nearest monitor, and when was it last calibrated?

·   Which pollutant is being reported—PM₂.₅, PM₁₀, AQI, or black carbon—and for what averaging period?

·   Which sources were tested, and what chemical or meteorological evidence supports the conclusion?

·   Are results, enforcement actions, and emission reductions publicly available?

·   Are the most exposed communities represented in decisions and receiving health protection?

 

From a powerful StoryMap to public action

Eniola Ore’s StoryMap, created under the supervision of Prof. Gervais Wafo Tabopda at the Georgia Institute of Technology, gives Port Harcourt’s soot crisis a human and geographic form. Its images show the burden residents describe; its maps help identify where investigation is needed; and its narrative connects air quality with health, ecosystems, energy, livelihoods, and governance.

The next step is to make the evidence more reproducible. Every map should state its source, date, unit, averaging period, resolution, and uncertainty. PM₂.₅, soot, black carbon, and AQI should be clearly distinguished. Live web readings should be archived with dates. Source claims should be tested with chemical analysis, wind data, and atmospheric modeling. Health and ecological claims should be linked to studies designed to test them.

BOTTOM LINE  Port Harcourt does not need to wait for perfect certainty before reducing harmful combustion. The best response combines immediate health protection with transparent monitoring, source control, cleaner energy, safe enforcement, health surveillance, livelihood transition, and community oversight.

 

A short reading list

Ede, P. N., & Edokpa, D. O. (2017). Satellite determination of particulate load over Port Harcourt during black soot incidents. Journal of Atmospheric Pollution, 5(2), 55–61. https://doi.org/10.12691/jap-5-2-3

Fawole, O. G., Cai, X., Abiye, O. E., & MacKenzie, A. R. (2019). Dispersion of gas flaring emissions in the Niger Delta. Environmental Pollution, 246, 284–293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.12.021

Kalagbor, I. A., Dibofori-Orji, A. N., & Ekpete, O. A. (2019). Exposure to heavy metals in soot samples and cancer risk assessment in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Journal of Health & Pollution, 9(24), 191211. https://doi.org/10.5696/2156-9614-9.24.191211

Obute, O. P., et al. (2026). Cardiopulmonary health effects of oil- and gas-related environmental pollution in the Niger Delta, Nigeria: A systematic review. Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, 19, Article 105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01989-4

Ore, E. (2022, December 4). Black Soot in Port Harcourt, Rivers State [ArcGIS StoryMap]. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2b196407e3124aa18f85e1fb5477c57b

World Health Organization. (2021). WHO global air quality guidelines. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240034228

Yakubu, O. H. (2018). Particle (soot) pollution in Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria—Double air pollution burden? Environments, 5(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments5010002

Image-use note. Figures reproduced from the reviewed StoryMap for scholarly criticism, public education, and discussion. The StoryMap identifies its author but does not provide original creator credits for every embedded photograph. Further republication should verify the underlying image rights and add complete creator/licence information.

Soccer, Nativism, and the Geography of Belonging: How Atlanta complicates the claim that political polarization limits the American game. By Gervais W Tabopda

 A three-lens assessment of Paige Meierhofer’s 2019 ArcGIS StoryMap, “Trumpism vs. Soccer,” prepared for scientific readers, city planners, civic leaders, and public policymakers.

Opening map. MLS team locations and 2016 presidential election results.
Source: Paige Meierhofer, “Trumpism vs. Soccer” ArcGIS StoryMap (2019). The map is reproduced from the supplied project files and reflects the league and election geography available at that time.

Original student research: Paige Meierhofer, Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning, 2019
Report prepared by: Gervais W. Tabopda
Date: July 2026

StoryMap: Trumpism vs. Soccer

                                                                                                                                          SOCCER, NATIVISM, AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF BELONGING

Executive summary

In 2019, planning student Paige Meierhofer posed a provocative question: could the nativist and counter-cosmopolitan politics associated with Trumpism obstruct soccer’s long-term growth in the United States? Her StoryMap connected the location of Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs, the 2016 presidential map, and Atlanta’s rapidly changing demographic geography. The central insight was that soccer’s American future would be negotiated not only through stadium economics and team performance, but also through contested ideas of nationhood, immigration, and cultural belonging.

The project remains unusually strong as public scholarship. Its national-to-local map sequence makes an abstract argument visible: a club can sit in a Republican-leaning state while drawing its core audience from a diverse, younger, and more Democratic metropolitan coalition. Atlanta is the exemplary case. The metropolitan area’s Hispanic/Latino population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, and it continued to grow by 31 percent across the Atlanta Regional Commission’s 11-county region between 2010 and 2020. In parallel, Atlanta United became one of the world’s best-attended clubs; MLS reported 65,520 spectators at its 2025 home opener. In 2026, Atlanta hosted eight FIFA World Cup matches, including a semifinal. These later developments do not invalidate the StoryMap. They show that political culture is a constraint, not destiny, and that metropolitan institutions can create bridges across ideological boundaries (ARC, 2018, 2021; MLS, 2025; FIFA, 2026).

Bottom line The StoryMap’s strongest finding is not that “red America rejects soccer.” It is that the relevant political geography is metropolitan and multiscalar. Statewide election maps conceal the urban, suburban, and demographic coalitions that actually sustain clubs. The project becomes publication-ready when it reframes nativism as one explanatory factor among several and tests it with individual-level fan data, travel-time analysis, and comparative city evidence.

Key findings for policymakers

• A red state is not a red market. State-level election results are too coarse to explain the audience of a metropolitan sports institution.

• Atlanta’s soccer success is geographically plausible because the region combines a large younger population, substantial racial and ethnic diversity, and strong growth in suburban Latino communities.

• Nativist discourse may shape symbolic acceptance of soccer, but the StoryMap does not directly measure fan attitudes, attendance, viewership, or causal effects.

• City governments should treat major soccer institutions as civic infrastructure: mobility, public space, youth access, multilingual communication, safety, local procurement, and immigrant-community partnerships all influence who belongs.

• The next research step is a multilevel geospatial design linking anonymized fan origins, stadium travel times, neighborhood demographics, election returns, survey attitudes, and club performance over time.

The three analytical lenses

1	Electoral geography: scale is the argument The national map suggests a partisan divide, but the Atlanta and Georgia maps reveal a more important pattern: metropolitan political coalitions differ sharply from statewide majorities. The analytical unit must match the behavior being explained.

2

Urban political economy: institutions create markets Atlanta United’s success cannot be reduced to demography. Ownership, stadium design, team performance, branding, transit access, ticket strategy, media distribution, and community partnerships help convert a potential audience into an active public.

3	Civic policy: sport can build belonging, but not automatically Soccer can offer shared rituals across language and nationality, yet it can also reproduce exclusion, commercialization, and unequal access. Public value depends on deliberate policies, not on the sport’s global symbolism alone.

A global game meets an American culture war.

Soccer has always carried more political meaning in the United States than its rules require. To supporters, it is the world’s common sporting language: a low-equipment game, a transnational media product, and an arena in which immigrant identities and local loyalties can coexist. To some critics, precisely those qualities have made it appear foreign, insufficiently “American,” or emblematic of globalization. Markovits and Rensmann describe the tension between globally circulating sports cultures and national sporting traditions. Waalkes similarly argues that soccer both reflects globalization and creates a hybrid “glocal” culture in which global forms acquire local meanings (Markovits & Rensmann, 2010; Waalkes, 2017).

Meierhofer’s StoryMap brought this literature into the political moment after the 2016 election. Drawing on the cultural-backlash framework associated with Inglehart and Norris, it treated Trumpism as a politics of threatened status, anti-immigrant sentiment, and resistance to cosmopolitan social change. This was a plausible theoretical move. Lindner and Hawkins had already found that attitudes toward cultural globalization were stronger predictors of soccer sentiment than conventional ideology or class in their survey of Nebraskans. The StoryMap’s innovation was to ask whether that cultural divide had a visible spatial expression in MLS geography (Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Lindner & Hawkins, 2012).

The resulting argument was deliberately sharp: because soccer depends heavily on younger, urban, and Latino audiences, a political movement that stigmatizes immigration and imported culture could narrow the sport’s path into the American mainstream. That proposition is analytically valuable because it moves beyond the usual explanation that soccer competes against the “Big Four” professional leagues. It asks whether the deeper competition is over national identity itself.

What the original project gets right Sport markets are cultural institutions, not merely collections of consumers. The meaning attached to a sport can affect media coverage, public investment, family participation, sponsorship, and the willingness of political leaders to treat it as part of the civic mainstream.

The national map is a hypothesis, not a verdict.

The StoryMap’s national figure overlays 2016 presidential results by state with MLS team locations. Visually, many clubs appear in states won by the Democratic presidential candidate. In contrast, clubs in Republican-won states are concentrated in major cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, and Salt Lake City. The map succeeds as an invitation to investigate. It does not, by itself, demonstrate that partisan ideology determines soccer demand.

The main reason is scale. MLS clubs are metropolitan institutions, while the election layer is statewide. A state can vote Republican while its largest urban counties vote Democratic, its inner suburbs diversify, and its outer suburbs remain competitive. The geographic pattern relevant to attendance is therefore not “red state versus blue state.” It is the distribution of population, income, age, ethnicity, transportation access, and political culture within each club’s realistic travel shed.

This is a classic ecological-inference problem. Individuals who live in a Republican-won state cannot be assumed to share the state majority’s vote, and Trump voters cannot be assumed to dislike soccer. The problem is intensified by the modifiable areal unit problem: the apparent relationship changes when analysts move from states to counties, tracts, ZIP codes, or drive-time catchments. A scientifically stronger article should therefore present the state map as a first-stage visualization and immediately test the same proposition at smaller geographic scales.

Figure 2. Georgia’s 2016 county election geography with the Atlanta club location marked.
Source: Paige Meierhofer, “Trumpism vs. Soccer” ArcGIS StoryMap (2019). Red counties indicate Trump pluralities; blue counties indicate Clinton pluralities. The figure illustrates the contrast between statewide outcomes and metropolitan voting clusters.

Atlanta reveals the metropolitan coalition behind soccer.

Atlanta is the StoryMap’s most persuasive section because it changes the scale of analysis. Instead of treating Georgia as a single political unit, it maps demographic change across the metropolitan region. The non-White population-change map and the population-age map show a broad, uneven field of potential supporters extending far beyond the city limits. The Hispanic population maps add an especially important dimension: the strongest concentrations are not confined to downtown Atlanta but appear in suburban corridors and municipalities across Gwinnett, Cobb, north Fulton, and DeKalb.

The demographic evidence is substantial. The Atlanta Regional Commission reported that the metropolitan Hispanic/Latino population grew from 268,851 in 2000 to 547,400 in 2010, an increase of 102 percent, and that the group’s median age was only 26 in the late 2010s. The 2020 Census then showed continued growth: the Hispanic population increased by 31 percent between 2010 and 2020 in the ARC’s 11-county region, with double-digit growth in every county. Gwinnett alone had more than 220,000 Hispanic residents in 2020, and dense concentrations remained visible along the Buford Highway corridor (ARC, 2018, 2021).

These patterns matter because stadium attendance is a regional mobility behavior. A fan base is assembled through transportation networks, household schedules, social ties, youth clubs, workplaces, media habits, and the symbolic appeal of the team. The StoryMap correctly recognizes suburban diversity as central to Atlanta United’s market. A downtown stadium can be regionally embedded when it is reachable, when the team’s identity feels inclusive, and when supporters see the club as representing the entire metropolitan area rather than only the central city.

The later evidence: political constraint did not prevent institutional success

The seven years since the StoryMap was published offer a natural stress test. If nativist politics were an overriding barrier, Atlanta should have struggled to sustain a major soccer institution in a Republican-leaning state. Instead, Atlanta United remained an attendance leader. MLS reported that 65,520 spectators attended the club’s 2025 home opener, the third-largest soccer crowd anywhere in the world that day. Atlanta also became one of the central US stages of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosting eight matches, including a semifinal (MLS, 2025; FIFA, 2026).

This does not prove that the cultural-backlash thesis was false. It suggests that its effect is conditional. Nativist rhetoric may influence the symbolic status of soccer. Still, strong metropolitan demand, effective ownership, high-capacity infrastructure, competitive teams, media access, and civic branding can outweigh or transform that constraint. The institution does not simply wait for a preexisting culture of acceptance; it helps produce one.

Atlanta therefore changes the article’s central claim. The most defensible conclusion is not that Trumpism prevents soccer’s growth. It is that soccer’s growth depends on how metropolitan institutions navigate a politically fragmented territory. Clubs succeed when they build a coalition broad enough to cross municipal, racial, linguistic, and partisan boundaries without pretending those differences have disappeared.

A more publishable thesis Nativist politics can make soccer a contested symbol of globalization, but metropolitan demographic change and institution-building determine whether that symbolic conflict becomes a material barrier. Atlanta demonstrates that the barrier can be crossed.

Policy agenda: turn a sports event into civic capacity

For planners and public officials, the relevant question is not simply whether soccer grows. It is whether the institutions built around the sport widen access, strengthen public space, and create durable relationships across the metropolitan region. The following actions translate the StoryMap’s cultural insight into a practical urban-policy agenda.

1. Build a regional sports-data compact Cities, transit agencies, clubs, universities, and community organizations should establish privacy-protective agreements for aggregated ticket origin, travel mode, and attendance data. Public subsidies and major-event partnerships should include transparent evaluation provisions.

2. Make mobility part of inclusion Event access depends on late-night transit, safe pedestrian routes, affordable fares, multilingual wayfinding, accessible shuttles, and coordination across county lines. A downtown stadium is not regionally inclusive if only car-owning households can reach it reliably.

3. Invest beyond the stadium World Cup and MLS legacies should include neighborhood fields, school partnerships, coaching pipelines, heat-resilient play spaces, and low-cost programs for girls, immigrant youth, and lower-income families.

4. Practice year-round cultural partnership Engagement with Latino, African, Caribbean, Asian, refugee, and international communities should not be confined to heritage nights. Clubs and cities should co-design programming with trusted organizations and compensate them for their expertise.

5. Protect pluralism in the public realm Fan codes of conduct, anti-harassment enforcement, language access, inclusive security training, and visible reporting channels are essential. Soccer’s global identity does not automatically prevent racism, xenophobia, or exclusion.

6. Measure the civic legacy Success metrics should include transit mode share, geographic diversity of attendance, youth participation, local and minority-owned procurement, neighborhood field access, resident satisfaction, and the distribution of public costs and benefits.

Conclusion: the politics of soccer are local, regional, and national at once

“Trumpism vs. Soccer” was an ambitious student project because it treated a sports league as a window into the politics of globalization. Its most memorable maps place Atlanta inside overlapping geographies: a Republican-leaning state, a Democratic urban core, diversifying suburbs, rapidly growing Latino communities, and a national sports market still negotiating soccer’s place in American identity.

The evidence available in 2026 supports a more nuanced conclusion than the original title implies. Soccer’s growth has not been halted by nativist politics. Atlanta’s attendance records and World Cup role demonstrate remarkable institutional success. Yet the project’s deeper concern remains relevant: belonging is unevenly distributed, and public culture is contested. The same metropolitan region can celebrate a global game while remaining polarized over immigration, race, and national identity.

That tension is precisely why the StoryMap deserves further development. Its cartography should be updated, its causal claims narrowed, and its research design expanded. With those revisions, the work can become a high-quality citizen-journal article and a serious agenda for urban political research: not a story about soccer defeating politics, but about how cities build institutions capable of living with political difference.

References and source notes

Atlanta Regional Commission. (2018, July 24). Data Dive: Metro Atlanta’s Latino Population Fast-growing, Young, and Diverse.

Atlanta Regional Commission. (2021, October 4). Hispanic population shows strong growth across metro ATL.

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). (2026). Atlanta: FIFA World Cup 2026 host city and match schedule.

Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash. Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Research Working Paper RWP16-026. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2818659

Lindner, A. M., & Hawkins, D. N. (2012). Globalization, culture wars, and attitudes toward soccer in America: An empirical assessment of how soccer explains the world. The Sociological Quarterly, 53(1), 68–91.

Major League Soccer. (2025, February 24). MLS is Back: Atlanta United host third-largest soccer crowd in the world.

Markovits, A. S., & Rensmann, L. (2010). Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture. Princeton University Press.

Meierhofer, P. (2019, July 18). Trumpism vs. Soccer: Explaining how nativism and counter-cosmopolitanism in the US hinder soccer’s potential to grow. ArcGIS StoryMaps. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/d9a9b718becf42f289d88dc17dea3e53

Openshaw, S. (1984). The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem. Geo Books.

Robinson, W. S. (1950). Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review, 15(3), 351–357.

Waalkes, S. (2017). Does soccer explain the world or does the world explain soccer? Soccer and globalization. Soccer & Society, 18(2–3), 166–180.

Figure source note

All maps reproduced in this report were supplied by the user from Paige Meierhofer’s 2019 ArcGIS StoryMap. They are retained as historical evidence of the original analysis. A publication submission should regenerate the maps from documented source data, add complete legends and metadata, and update the political, demographic, and MLS layers to a common date.