world’s first business improvement district.
The
Business improvement
districts
Kevin Ward
University of Manchester, UK
Business improvement districts are public–private
partnerships in which property and/or business
owners in a defined geographic area elect to
make a collective contribution to the mainte-
nance, development, and marketing/promotion
of their commercial district. This is done in
the form of a self-agreed and self-imposed levy,
or “tax,” which is a percentage of the annual
business rates. Collected by local government in
some countries and by central government in
others, this tax is then given over to a business
improvement district management committee
consisting of paid officials and elected represen-
tatives of local businesses and, in some cases, local
residents. It decides how to spend its budget,
which in a city like New York ranges from
US$500 000 for a business improvement district
in Harlem to over $10 million for a business
improvement district in midtown Manhattan.
The business improvement district (BID)
program began in a small west Toronto shopping
area. In the 1960s, local retailers in the Bloor
West Village realized that voluntary contribu-
tions would be insufficient for them to deliver
yearly revitalization strategies. After a series of
meetings between local and provincial officials
and local business representatives to discuss the
establishment of a self-imposed levy, the city of
Toronto passed By-law no. 170-70. The Ontario
Municipal Board then approved the Bloor Jane
Runnymede Business Improvement Area, the
The International Encyclopedia of Geography.
Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0036
city is now home to 77 business improvement
districts and more than 300 exist across Canada.
The first US business improvement district was
established in New Orleans in 1975. Since then
the number of business improvement districts
across the country has grown, as states have
introduced enabling legislation. By the end of
the twentieth century, just 25 years after they
were first established in US cities and towns,
there were over 400 in 42 states, with 64%
in just five: California, New York, New Jer-
sey, North Carolina, and Wisconsin (Mitchell
1999). According to Hochleutner (2003, 374),
business improvement districts have changed
“the way America governs its shopping districts,
commercial areas, and downtowns.”
In the past 15 years, a number of other
countries have introduced BID programs. These
include Australia, Germany, Ireland, Japan, South
Africa, the Netherlands, and the United King-
dom. This internationalization has increased the
number of BID programs at play and the differ-
ences between them: for example, between the
services they provide, the level of contribution by
businesses, and the way in which the contribu-
tion is calculated, which varies, sometimes subtly
and sometimes dramatically, from BID program
to BID program. Likewise, there is a significant
variety over space in the types of business that
participate in its management, those who are
levied, and those who are eligible to vote. In the
United Kingdom, for instance, the contribution
is compulsory for all business property occupiers
within the area once the business improve-
ment district is established, setting it apart from
predecessors such as town center management
schemes. In the United States, it is compulsory
BU S I N E S S I M P ROV E M E N T DI S T R I C T S
for all property owners in a designated zone,
although in some states churches and schools are
exempt from the levy. In other countries, such
as Australia, the contribution is not compulsory.
The name “business improvement district,” fur-
thermore, is not always used – so in Canada it is
business improvement areas, in the Netherlands
“bedrijven investeringszones” (business invest-
ment zones), and in Germany, neighborhood
improvement districts. So while it is possible to
write of a single BID program, there is actually a
variety of similar, and contrasting, BID programs
in existence and circulation.
Nevertheless, these differences should not
mask a number of similarities in the different
BID programs. There is significant overlap
between what business improvement districts
do in different cities around the world. Mallett
(1994, 277) has argued that the US BID program
was “concerned with cleanliness and aesthetics
of public space, security, achieving the best mix
of activities, transportation access, and portraying
an image of the whole to potential consumers.”
That is, US business improvement districts
“understand that simple things – such as keeping
sidewalks clean and safe – matter enormously
to the urban quality of life” (MacDonald 1996).
This is also the case for other countries’ BID
programs. In some countries, BID programs
augment services provided by local government.
In others, their work occurs in the space left by
the redrawing of government boundaries. So,
in the United States, Mallett (1994, 284) has
argued that “[B]usiness improvement districts
are a response to the failure of local government
to adequately maintain and manage spaces of the
post-industrial city.”
More specifically, what business improve-
ment districts do can be grouped into three
types of activity. First are those that that target
physical infrastructure. Examples include capital
improvements (e.g., lighting, street furniture,
2
shrubbery, etc.), economic development (e.g.,
offering incentives to businesses to relocate
or stay in the BID area), and maintenance
(e.g., collecting rubbish, removing litter and
graffiti, etc.). The second type of activity is
those focused on promotional infrastructure.
Examples include consumer marketing (e.g.,
organizing and advertising events, producing
and distributing maps and newsletters) and
policy advocacy (e.g., lobbying government and
other stakeholders, liaising with other business
improvement districts, etc.). The third type
of activity is surveillance infrastructure: for
example, enhancement of public space regula-
tion (e.g., regulating traffic flow, discouraging
on-sidewalk selling, moving along the homeless,
etc.) and security (e.g., ambassadors, security
guards, and the use of CCTV cameras).
It is possible to understand the presence of
business improvement districts in a growing
number of cities around the world in a number
of ways. For some, they reflect a bottom-up
uprising by capital, as local businesses voluntarily
involve themselves in decisions over how to
govern and use public space. Here, work seeks
to evaluate the impact of business improvement
districts against a number of criteria or “key
performance indicators.” Concerns center on
efficiency and the value the BID program adds
in terms of economic development (Mitchell
1999). For others, the BID program reflects the
growing role assigned to capital and its represen-
tatives in the governance of cities, as governments
are restructured. This work raises concerns over
the “right to the city” and to whom business
improvement districts are accountable. It argues
that the BID program is one of a number of
examples that reflect the growing interweav-
ing of market-based and state-based regulatory
arrangements, the combined effects of which
have profound implications for notions of spatial
and social justice (Ward 2006).

SEE ALSO: Deindustrialization; Governance
and development; Public space; Urban political
ecology
References
Hochleutner, Brian R. 2003. “BIDs Fare Well: The
Democratic Accountability of Business Improve-
ment Districts.” New York University Law Review,
78: 374–404.
MacDonald, Heather. 1996. Why Business Improve-
ments Districts Work. Manhattan Institute for Pol-
icy Research, Civic Bulletin No. 4. http://www.
manhattan-institute.org/html/cb_4.htm (accessed
October 17, 2015).
Mallett, William J. 1994. “Managing the
Post-Industrial City: Business Improvement
Districts in the United States.” Area, 26: 276–287.
BU S I N E S S I M P ROV E M E N T DI S T R I C T S
Mitchell, Jerry. 1999. Business Improvement Districts
and Innovative Service Delivery. Arlington, VA:
The PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the
Business of Government.
Ward, Kevin. 2006. “‘Policies in Motion’, Urban
Management and State Restructuring: The
Trans-Local Expansion of Business Improvement
Districts.” International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 30: 54–75.
Further reading
Hoyt, Lorlene. 2006. “Importing Ideas: The Transna-
tional Transfer of Urban Revitalization Policy.”
International Journal of Public Administration, 29:
221–243.