Downtown becomes Disneyland?
A free ride for government?
An unaccountable quasi-government?
Private control of public space?
Is this what cities should look like?
Downtown benefits in the end?

The proliferation of BIDs raises many interesting questions about who is controlling our public environment and the future impacts this may have.  Should an entity controlled by one interest group have such complete control over a public good?

Despite the fact that most BIDs seem to be mission driven and are dedicated to helping to make center cities attractive to business and residents, it is important that the following issues be discussed in order to ensure that cites remain accesssible and diverse places.

Downtown becomes Disneyland?

• Ironically, the transformation of unplanned and sometimes threatening urban space into more familiar and secure suburban type spaces has been the root of BIDs most significant success as well as their most intense criticism.

• In many ways, the rise of BIDs parallels the rise of new urbanist communities such as Seaside and Celebration that seek to recreate the best parts of urban places and neighborhoods through strict design and building codes that leave no room for the randomness that is an inherent characteristic of great, realistic urban places.

• While no one can deny the success of BIDs in Times Square, New York City and Center City, Philadelphia in transforming formerly threatening and unsafe areas into attractive and pleasant urban destinations, critics contend,”neighborhoods have been colonized by national chains such as starbucks and the gap while local culture is vanishing, facilitated by BIDs trading the past for control of the present.”

A free ride for government?

• Typically, most BIDs take on activities normally provided by municipal government, such as street cleaning, crime prevention, landscaping, and other streetscape improvements such as lighting, signage and tree planting.

• Many districts have made a vast visible difference in city neighborhood by helping to reduce crime, clean up streets and restore a sense of pride in merchants and the public.  While providing services that for decades fell through cracks of city government have produced many positive results, it also allows municipalities to divert their attention to other parts of the city that don’t have their own mechanisms for providing such services.

• As a result, some merchants in BID districts have complained that, “cities are promoting the districts in an attempt to palm off maintenance of public spaces on the business community.”

• However, for property owners within new districts this means paying taxes to the city and assessments to the district for the same types of services like police protection and street cleaning.

An unaccountable quasi-government?

• Double-taxation in order to receive services that city agencies should be providing may be the most efficient way to see results quickly but it also represents an abdication of a public good to management by private interests that are not accountable to voters.

• Peter Salins, professor of urban planning at Hunter College calls them, “a perverse exchange of responsibility between the public and private domains.”

• While many BIDs have impressive records of achievement, their internal processes can be sloppy because they are not accountable to the same type of participation and decisionmaking models legally required by most public agencies.

• As BIDs gain more power, some business owners believe they are not given enough of a say in setting policy and that BIDs represent, “a whole new subdivision of government that is not accountable to elected officials.”

• However, adding an extra layer of government oversight can take away the nimbleness which makes BIDs so effective.

Private control of public space?

• Access and diversity are essential characteristics of great cities and civic places.  At one time, downtowns represented the democratic heart of society, with expensive townhomes next to low-income apartment buildings.  Richard Bradley, President of the International Downtown Association, describes downtown as, “still one of the few multicultural places left in the U.S., and thus essential to the future of a multiethnic, urbanized nation.”

• Alarmingly, management by a private entity of public sidewalks, parks and other spaces has restricted neighborhoods of many cities to those considered desirable by BID management.

• While the creation of cleaner, non-threatening environments has helped to revitalize urban neighborhoods, at the same time BIDs may be unintentionally sacrificing downtown’s most valuable assets, access and diversity.

• For anyone who wants to see cities remain competitive in the next century, it is hard to argue with the potential benefits of creating cleaner and safer public places.  However, the impacts of trading access and diversity for economic gain may not be as essential as previously thought if the price is a sanitized environment with the same homogeneity as a suburban shopping mall.

Is this what cities should look like?

• Although many BID’s have  managed to clean up and improve the streets and public spaces of downtown neighborhoods, the debate continues over whether this is a positive or negative strategy for the future of cities.

• For example, BIDs have been negatively compared to “gated communities” due to their reliance on a private governing structure to control the area within their geographic boundaries and the fact that both entities often require strict aesthetic codes.

• Times Square is probably one of the best examples of how a BID can transform the aesthetics of a neighborhood.  While most residents were supportive of the BID’s effort to regulate adult-oriented businesses out of the area, the redevelopment of Times Square has been criticized as swinging too far in the opposite direction.

• Some critics are now calling it a “static festival,” with its high tech electronic signs and retail environments that function as multimedia entertainment spaces.

• When a mass redevelopment occurs driven by private interests, such as in cities all over the world for the Olympic games, it is necessary to question how much these changes are representative of neighborhood culture, and whether certain competitive advantages are lost when what makes an area unique is sacrificed for uniformity and familiarity.

Downtown benefits in the end?

Despite the criticism, Times Square’s redevelopment has fostered significant private investment in the neighborhood which has raised property values and created new economic opportunities for small business owners.  Most BIDs have undertaken similar development efforts that have made neighborhoods cleaner, easier to find, more user-friendly and safer.

In addition, most BID critics will agree that the public disinvestment in many cities during the 1980s created a need for new revitalization approaches and drastic measures uncomplicated by public sector regulations in order to make cities attractive places to live, work and recreate again.  The self-help approach embodied in BID structure combined with aggressive private sector management is one solution to help cities remain competitive with suburban shopping areas.