Would they be allowed to place blocks in those areas?
If not, use a command block setup to change them into adventure mode when they enter the area, and back into survival when they leave. (And perhaps minetweak torches to give them a CanPlaceOn tag)
If you want the command blocks to be hidden, just hide them in a wall in the spawn chunks--after all, if they're hidden in a wall, players shouldn't be able to break blocks to get to it.
If there isn't a preset map, you could always try using a structure generator to put the command blocks (+ a chunk loader) in a small bedrock box several thousand blocks away from spawn.
Disclaimer: I'm not great at redstone/command blocks, but from what I understand of them, the above should be possible.