Beyond Public and Private

Business improvement districts don't fit our ordinary categories.

Jesse Walker from the November 2003 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

� Instead of pouring money into the usual civic white elephant projects -- "hotels, convention centers, sports arenas and other megastructures" -- BIDs focus on "street-level services and small-scale improvements."

� Rather than diverting public money from the rest of the city, BIDs generate most or all of their own income.

The biggest problem with BIDs may be the values embedded in them: They're closer in spirit to a theme park than to a bustling urban plaza. It's one thing to crack down on litter and crime. It's quite another to do battle, as BIDs do routinely, with sidewalk vendors, leafletters, and other elements of a festive street life. The conflict becomes more acute when it turns one property owner against another. For evidence, examine Times Square in Manhattan. Its transformation from sex district to sanitized tourist haven was accomplished in part by the direct and indirect efforts of the local BID.

Political power should be as diffused and decentralized as possible, to give us both more of a voice in public decisions and more freedom to exit when our voices go unheeded. So it isn't a problem when cities devolve power to districts that want to model themselves after malls. It's a problem when they fail to grant similar toolkits to areas whose denizens prefer bazaars -- or which aren't shopping centers to begin with. Washington, D.C., has four BIDs and 37 neighborhood commissions. The BIDs have the power to tax themselves to provide additional services. The neighborhood commissions don't, and thus don't have much reason to exist; they're widely regarded as one more joke in a city that's full of laughs. (And no area has the power both to tax itself and to exempt itself from the city government's levies.)

A vibrant city would have both theme parks and bazaars, self-governing business districts and self-governing neighborhoods, well-kept malls and grungy community gardens. BIDs can be a step in that direction, but if they're the only step a city takes, the town is bound for blandness.