Business Improvement Districts Research Articles

Spillover effects of business improvement districts on residential housing values: a focus on the northern region in Los Angeles county, California

ABSTRACT In response to the decline in commercial areas, there has been a growing interest in the implementation of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in large developed cities in North America. However, there is limited understanding of whether BIDs have economic effects on surrounding neighbourhoods. This study aims to answer the following research question: do BIDs positively affect nearby residential properties? To analyze the influence of BIDs on the housing market, we examined single- and multi-family home sale transactions between 1995 and 2007 in the City of Los Angeles, California. We employed the Adjusted Interrupted Time Series Difference in Differences (AITS DID) model to analyze changes in both the price levels and trends of housing values, and to establish the causal impact associated with the implementation of BIDs. Our findings show that the implementation of BIDs had a significant impact on the value of properties located within a 1/2 mile of the BIDs in single- and multi-family homes, as well as in low-income neighbourhoods. The findings from this study will provide valuable insights for planners, residents, and local governments to better comprehend the heterogeneous nature of spillover effects associated with BID programs.

Solutions in search of a problem: Opening policy windows for Business Improvement Districts in the Nordic countries

Policy mobility literature invites us to consider the power-laden processes of how urban policies are exported, mimicked, and transformed in different urban contexts. However, recent critique has highlighted the need for a fuller understanding of urban policy context to understand where and when policies come to be implemented in new settings and how they are transformed. The purpose of this study is to explore understandings of urban policy context in a comparative study of policy mobility, and specifically relations between internationally packaged concepts, local pilot projects and national level actors. We develop a framework for understanding these relations in policy mobility based on case studies of BID policy development in Sweden and Denmark drawing on both Policy Mobility literature and a Multiple Streams Approach. The main finding is that local pilots play a key role in translating packaged policy concepts but also serve as ‘proof of concept’ for further institutionalization. The way these pilots are discursively situated in relation to ‘problems’ is therefore of central importance for further implementation. Furthermore, the study highlights the role of policy entrepreneurs that connect local pilots (and discursive problems) with national level actors, and political opportunities.

Spatial preferences of small and medium knowledge based enterprises in Tehran new business area

In recent decades, there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as a significant driver of economic growth and enhancer of competitiveness. They constitute an estimated 90% of the total population of businesses, and contribute significantly, up to 40% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in emerging markets. Furthermore, these enterprises yield a fundamental function in cultivating job prospects, offering employment to approximately half of the worldwide labor force. However, SMEs often face unique challenges related to their size and resources, including accessing finance, developing new products and services, and identifying optimal locations for their businesses. This study seeks to address the latter issue by analyzing the spatial preferences of small and medium knowledge-based enterprises in Tehran's new business area, utilizing the spatial analyst tools by GIS. The research methodology employed in this study is non-experimental in character. It involves the distribution of a social survey to proprietors of SMEs in order to ascertain the key criteria they prioritize when selecting a location for their business. For the purpose of achieving the objective, a conceptual-operational model was developed, comprising four index categories. These categories are delineated as the personal motivations of the entrepreneur, the characteristics of the internal business environment, the spatial environment surrounding the business, and the institutional factors shaping the space. These components constitute critical determinants of the proposed model. The chosen variables were subjected to spatial analysis, and a business environment assistance map was developed in four zones. Following thorough analysis, the northwestern part of the area under consideration has been identified as the optimal zone, and subsequent recommendations for appropriate strategies have been proposed. The study culminated by offering suggestions for improvement, consisting of the implementation of a contextually-oriented model pertaining to new Iranian business improvement districts (BIDs) as a means of augmenting the status of SMEs.

A scoping review of retail environment interventions and their impacts on health and wellbeing

Abstract Background ‘High streets’ and town centres are influential in shaping health. In recent years many countries implemented policies to revitalise and financially support retail environments. The aim of this scoping review is to systematically map evidence on retail environment interventions, to gain an understanding of their possible health and wellbeing impacts. This review identifies types of interventions, the health outcomes they address and the associated theories of change. Methods Peer-reviewed studies in English were identified through five academic databases using search terms for relevant initiatives and health and wellbeing outcomes. Grey literature was identified online and through citation scanning. Studies were eligible if they evaluated interventions with a significant focus on supporting the retail environment, reporting on at least one health and wellbeing outcome. Extracted data were presented descriptively. Theories of change were analysed using an interpretive approach. Results Of 6,752 identified evaluations, 53 peer-reviewed studies and 10 grey literature reports were included. Interventions types were area-based initiatives, business improvement districts, business incentives, and demand-side incentives. The most common outcomes were social and environmental determinants of health, although impacts on physical health, mental health, and food consumption and purchasing were also studied. Most interventions involved partnerships with the private sector or were ‘whole-of-society’ initiatives. Evidence for the effectiveness of interventions was mixed, depending on the type of intervention. Theories of change were found to be reductionist and often did not account for context-specific factors. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first review of literature evaluating the health impacts of interventions aimed at revitalising retail environments. Future interventions should more comprehensively address economic, health and social outcomes. Key messages • High street environments are influential in shaping health, and initiatives aimed at supporting local businesses should consider health and social objectives. • Most literature to date evaluates social and environmental outcomes of retail environment interventions rather than more direct health and wellbeing outcomes.

Semiotics of a Covid landscape

Abstract This paper brings together urban planning and linguistic perspectives to examine the semiotic landscape of a Washington, DC ‘streatery’ in the context of the intersecting public health- and place-based economic crises unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing from Garay-Huamán and Irazábal-Zurita’s (2021) work on neoliberal Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA), we examine how different layers of Adams Morgan’s emergent Covid landscape are rooted in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation through urban placemaking strategies. We focus on signs put up by the Business Improvement District (BID) that explain the public health regulations applicable to the area through discourse that playfully encourages people to social distance and wear masks. These signs utilize three linguistic or semiotic discourses: hygiene, humor and play, and anti-Trump politics. The signs serve as a bona fide effort to both halt the spread of the coronavirus and take a political stance. At the same time as the signs promote public health, their commodified aestheticization of hygiene and politics also serves commercial interests.

Effects of business improvement districts on firm performance, property values and urban safety: an empirical study of five small to medium-sized Swedish towns

ABSTRACT Business improvement districts (BIDs) have emerged as possible solutions for the revitalisation of declining urban areas. We investigate the effects of a voluntary Swedish BID programme on firm performance, urban safety and property values in five small to medium-sized Swedish towns, and find that it increased labour productivity for incumbent firms within the BID by about 7%, mainly through an increase in revenues. However, the positive effect of the BID programme on firm performance is transitory, decreasing sharply during the third year after implementation and then becoming insignificant. As for urban safety and property values, the results are mostly insignificant.

Carving a place for UK business improvement districts through COVID: exploring industry responses and practices during the pandemic

PurposeThis study aims to explore UK Business Improvement Districts' (BIDs) responses and practices to the COVID crisis and evaluates how these influenced their organisational identity. The paper aims to highlight the possible shift in BIDs' operations that can lead to their positioning as integral facilitators of place management initiatives in their local areas.Design/methodology/approachThe authors stress the confused nature of BID identity and highlight how BID activities and business plans correspond to subsequent crises through the lens of crisis management and disaster management frameworks. A mixed-methods, exploratory, sequential approach was taken, incorporating interviews and survey responses from UK BID managers in two distinct phases between October and December 2020.FindingsThe findings of the study suggest a greater emphasis on communication strategies and the formation of partnerships during the lockdown periods, along with a renewed understanding of a BID's role towards place leadership, resilience and public safety.Practical implicationsThe practical implications of this work show a shift in BID business practices, programmes and services and highlight the need to establish a set of industry standards and best practices with enhanced place leadership responsibilities.Originality/valueThe research provides a detailed snapshot of the UK BID industry during the COVID crisis and shows the possibility for BIDs to reframe their identity as locally bound, place-based organisations that have a more direct role in place management.

Making power visible: Business improvement districts and creative placemaking in Washington, DC

Business improvement districts represent a privatising urban governance instrument that visibly transforms urban landscapes. In the United States, the racialised impacts of business improvement districts require examination. Through a discussion of Washington, DC, a city profoundly injured by racist planning histories, we illustrate how business improvement districts, as part of a broader entrepreneurial regime, have driven gentrification citywide since the late 1990s. Focusing on the intersection of redevelopment and ‘creative placemaking’, we make visible the contradictions embedded in this business improvement district urbanism, which has harnessed the work of a network of actors to revalorise urban space while erasing working class places and in DC, its Black cultural, political and economic space.

Community Support Organizations in Gay Neighborhoods: Assessing Engagement During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Volunteerism, grassroots activism, and mutual aid have been critical to the advancement of rights and opportunities for LGBTQ+ people. These activities are institutionally anchored within supportive organizations embedded in LGBTQ+ communities. But these supportive organizations can be stressed by external crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, limiting the capacity for providing routine services. This article provides a typology of community support organizations—including healthcare providers, business improvement districts, neighborhood planning organizations, and social groups and clubs—to better understand how non-governmental organizations and non-profit entities provide services not traditionally provided by government agencies for LGBTQ+ people. We characterize how community support organizations continued to provide critical services to the LGBTQ+ community—consistent with the missions and aims of these organizations—while also providing services and information related to health and safety during the Covid-19 pandemic. The article concludes with takeaway messages that synthesize the functions and services of community support organizations and explain how various types of supportive organizations in gay neighborhoods responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Revitalizing Chinatown for a new generation: The community politics of the business improvement district

ABSTRACT Business improvement districts (BIDs) have become prominent but controversial tools for economic development and urban governance. While they have been praised for helping to revitalize economically depressed commercial areas, they also have been linked to concerns about gentrification, especially in smaller-scale urban neighborhoods. Drawing from ethnographic data on Los Angeles Chinatown, this article examines how BIDs may serve as a mechanism for gentrification in historic urban ethnic spaces by contributing to political and cultural restructuring. Through its governance structure, information sharing practices, and marketing activities, the BID contributes to changes to the neighborhood’s political structure and cultural identity. The findings show that BIDs can create displacement pressures by legitimizing a new economic and political elite from within the community who are steering neighborhood changes to create an upscaled, modern identity of the neighborhood.

Examining the role of business improvement districts (BIDs) as contemporary alternatives for Green Infrastructure funding in London, UK

Sustainable sources of funding for investment in Green Infrastructure have become increasingly difficult to identify due to centralised government financing cuts in the UK. Although local government, as traditional normative funders, have adopted innovative approaches to capital and revenue spending there remains a significant gap in how and what resources are supported. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are one set of stakeholders that potentially have a role to play in addressing funding deficits. As subscriber funded organisations, they work at a local level to enhance economic prosperity, as well as delivering socio-cultural and ecological enhancement in identified urban areas. This paper examines the experience of BIDs in London to debate the influences and barriers to their investing in Green Infrastructure. It argues that BIDs can act as critical advocates for Green Infrastructure planning where the latter aligns with local economic objectives. Moreover, we identify spatial variations in the extent to which BIDs in London engage with Green Infrastructure in their documentation and practice, illustrating differences in the perceived value of the concept. We conclude that BIDs hold the potential to facilitate investment in Green Infrastructure due to their position as conduits of business, local government, and community objectives. However, to fully embrace this role balance is needed between the setting of environmental objectives and the need to support local business needs, land ownership issues, and capital/revenue financing considerations.

The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism

The City and the City: Tent Camps and Luxury Development in the NoMA Business Improvement District (BID) in Washington, D.C.

The NoMA Business Improvement District (BID) is one of Washington DC's fastest developing areas and has one of the city's largest concentrations of unhoused tent camps, many of which are located in underpasses that provide bits of protection and privacy. These underpasses were created during DC's City Beautiful Movement and have been the site of neoliberal antihomeless strategies. In this paper I explore the production of space in the NoMA area and how property owners, business associations, and government actors sanitized public space for wealthy newcomers while excluding poor and unhoused residents.

Business Improvement Districts and Housing Markets: Evidence from Neighborhoods in London

Business Improvement Districts and Housing Markets: Evidence from Neighborhoods in London

Business improvement districts, class turf war and the strategic weaponisation of class monopoly rent

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are understood as a proactive response by locally dependent property owners and businesses aimed at attracting capital investment and consumers back to the central city at a time of increasingly gutted public sector resources. BIDs have yet to be explicitly examined as a form of rent-seeking, even though the primary motivation for property owners to self-impose additional taxes for implementing ‘clean and safe’ programmes is rent. In this context, the self-imposed tax is treated as a speculative investment that will hopefully yield a return in the form of enhanced profit for businesses and rents for landowners. As such, we conceptualise BIDs as not only a form of rent-seeking, but an alliance of private-sector actors engaged in the collaborative and strategic mobilisation of class monopoly rent as a weapon against all perceived barriers to profitability. Based on evidence from Seattle, Washington, the paper deepens our understanding of BIDs by linking this phenomenon to the spatial dynamics of rent within the contemporary neoliberal city and concludes by discussing the implications for what BIDs reveal about class monopoly rent in particular, the kind of class conflict this form of rent configures and its role within wider processes of neoliberal urbanisation.

Class monopoly rent and the urban sustainability fix in Seattle's South Lake Union District

The paper contributes to the recent renaissance in Marxian land rent theory by examining the dynamics of rent in the context of contemporary urban sustainability policies and practices. It specifically examines the ways in which landowners, developers, and the local state work together to pursue class monopoly rent through a variety of policies and practices normally treated as separate, such as tax-increment financing, discursive-branding, urban growth boundaries, business improvement districts, and transfer of development rights. We implicate each of these practices as fundamentally linked insofar as they function as strategies for myriad invested actors in collaboratively pursuing class monopoly rent. In the process, we present a heuristic tool to conceptualize how these policies converge to the benefit of myriad rent seekers in the context of Seattle's rapidly redeveloping South Lake Union District. The study peels back the discursive and ostensibly progressive façade of urban sustainability to reveal a collaborative network of landowners, developers, and state actors whose goal is to increase rents. The multi-scalar dynamic of class monopoly rent is revealed as a constitutive feature of an urban sustainability fix embedded within wider processes of uneven neoliberal urbanization.

Science Mapping the Academic Knowledge on Business Improvement Districts

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are a contemporary urban revitalization policy that has been set in motion through international policymaking circuits. They have been presented as a panacea to the economic and social challenges facing many cities and traditional shopping districts. However, a comprehensive overview of the academic literature on this form of local governance remains to be conducted. Drawing on bibliometric methods and bibliometrix R-tool, this paper maps and examines the state-of-the-art of academic knowledge on BIDs published between 1979 and 2021. Findings suggest that (i) scientific production has increased since the early 2000s, has crossed US borders but remains highly Anglo-Saxon-centered; (ii) academic knowledge on BIDs is multidisciplinary and has been published in high-impact journals; (iii) influential documents on BIDs have centered on three issues: urban governance/politics, policy mobilities–mutation and impacts assessment and criticisms; (iv) while author collaboration networks exist, the interaction between them is limited; (v) the conceptualization of BIDs has changed over time, both in thematic and geographical focus. These results constitute the first science mapping on the academic literature on BIDs, and we argue they should inform future scientific debates about the studying of this form of local governance.

Fifty years of Business Improvement Districts: A reappraisal of the dominant perspectives and debates

Originally created in 1970 by a small group of business people in Toronto’s Bloor West Village, Business Improvement Districts (hereafter BIDs) have become commonplace urban revitalisation strategies in cities across the world. Many critical urban scholars have conceptualised BIDs as neoliberal organisations and have resultantly critiqued their role in contemporary urban governance. With BIDs now existing for over 50 years, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overdue reappraisal of the BID research and orient future scholarship. After describing key debates from early BID research, this paper analyses two distinct themes in more recent scholarship: (1) BID policy mobility, and (2) BIDs and social regulation. As the BID model has been transferred to new locations across both the Global North and South, its rapid mobility demonstrates the permeability, resilience and limits of neoliberal urban policies. Moreover, BIDs’ social control tactics highlight how these organisations are shaped by a neoliberal logic that seeks to manage and control urban spaces in ways that attract desirable consumers and exclude the visible poor. This paper outlines the origins of both bodies of work and traces common patterns and variances over time. It concludes by highlighting gaps in the existing literature and offers suggestions for future work.

The Involvement of Business Elites in the Management of Homelessness: Towards a Privatization of Service Provision for Homeless People?

Although the influence of local urban elites on urban planning is well established in urban studies and geography, the ways in which business and property owners take part in the management of homelessness has received far less attention. This article focuses on Portland (OR) in the United States as a means of understanding the motivations that underlie the role of the private sector and its impact on public policies. To this end, I focus on the support by Portland's downtown Business Improvement District of homeless outreach programs, and on the funding of two homeless shelters by business elites / philanthropists. I argue that although public authorities have different views on the actions to be taken to end homelessness, business elites often manage to bring initially-reluctant public authorities to support their projects in what might be termed a forced-march cooperation. I also highlight the versatility of the private sector and business elites’ participation in homelessness management, given that the outreach programs they support and the homeless facilities they fund provide services for the homeless while simultaneously removing them from visible public space. In this sense, the involvement of business and property owners is also a way for them to protect their own interests.

The Business of Improving Neighborhoods. A Critical Overview of Neighborhood-Based Business Improvement Districts (NBIDs) in Sweden

This article offers an overview of neighbourhood-based BIDs (NBIDs) in Sweden. Swedish NBIDs tend to appear in stigmatized residential areas engaging with pressing sets of urban issues that have been longstanding concern of social policy. Their overarching goal is raising property values in neighborhoods on the edge between urban decline and (re)development potential. Emerging in a neoliberalizing institutional context, NBIDs present themselves as correctives to public-policy failures by promoting property-oriented solutions. The adaptation of the BID model in the Swedish ‘post-welfare’ landscape, however, exhibits, and arguably exacerbates, the shortcomings found in BID elsewhere. Their opaque institutional structure and lack of accountability contribute to curbing democratic influence over local development, thus reinforcing spatial inequalities. We argue that the growing political advocacy for the institutionalization of the BID model in Sweden presents a new milestone in the neoliberalization of urban governance, as private actors are promoted to legitimate co-creators of urban policy.