Business improvement areas and the socio-cultural power of lobbying: Imposing market interests to affordable housing development

Daniel Kudla

doi:10.1177/0308518x211031919

Abstract

While studies have shown that Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) manage and control their physical urban spaces to generate local economic growth, little work has examined how these organizations lobby for their market interests during key decision-making processes. Drawing from the pragmatic sociology of critique, this paper develops a theoretical framework to explain how political-economic power is socio-culturally encoded during local government decision-making processes. Socio-cultural power is defined through two interrelated processes: (1) interactional settings where social actors practice their critical capacity by drawing upon socio-historically created moral orders and (2) the extent to which institutional experts limit laypersons' critical capacity and successfully construct local realities to advance their agendas. This framework is applied to London, Ontario's Old East Village to show how the local BIA influenced two separate affordable housing development plans. Based on interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, the findings show that the Old East Village BIA strategically framed and co-opted community critiques of these developments in a way that justified their own market interests (more feet on the street) over the community's civic interests (the provision of affordable housing). This paper extends the BIA literature by demonstrating BIA influence over affordable housing development, local matters that are outside the purview of their commercial jurisdiction.

Highlights

Municipal governments are increasingly relying on Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) – or Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in the U.S – to revitalize urban spaces and generate local economic growth
The purpose of this paper was to understand how the Old East Village BIA (OEVBIA) justified “what should and should not happen” during the residential planning process and to what extent their market interests were legitimized into residential plans
This paper showed how the BIA established themselves as the main gatekeeper of community critique and, as a result, successfully imposed their market interests onto two affordable housing developments by strategically framing and co-opting community critiques

Summary

Introduction

Municipal governments are increasingly relying on Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) – or Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in the U.S – to revitalize urban spaces and generate local economic growth. Since BIAs often gain privileged access to local government decision-making processes (see Michel and Stein, 2014), these organizations exercise power over their physical urban space, they have the power to persuade local governments to enact business-backed interests to local urban plans. This paper argues that any understanding of BIAs’ power over urban space must be attuned to the socio-cultural power enacted during decision-making interactions with local governments. Interviews, and document analysis from London, Ontario’s Old East Village BIA (OEVBIA), this paper asks two questions: (1) how does the OEVBIA attempt to justify “what should and should not happen” during the residential planning process? Interviews, and document analysis from London, Ontario’s Old East Village BIA (OEVBIA), this paper asks two questions: (1) how does the OEVBIA attempt to justify “what should and should not happen” during the residential planning process? (2) To what extent does the OEVBIA successfully legitimize their market interests into residential plans?

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion