Business Improvement Districts in England and the (Private?) Governance of Urban Spaces

Abstract

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) were introduced in England just over ten years ago, and their adoption in over 180 locations all over the country owes a great deal to their potential ability to raise private funds to invest in the development of business areas. However, much of the academic literature on BIDs has been critical of what it sees as an expansion of corporate control of urban spaces and the weakening of elected local government, often on the evidence of a long-running North American debate. On the basis of ten case studies of English BIDs, in this paper I address the evolution of those organisations as private stakeholder-led instruments for the governance and management of business areas in England. I discuss whether and to what extent English BIDs constitute private government of urban areas, and the attendant issues of accountability and spatial inequalities in the distribution of public services and investment. I conclude by examining the implications of its findings for the future of urban governance.

Governing urban development for climate risk: What role for public–private partnerships?

“…Foremost amongst criticisms is that private sector involvement creates risks to the public interest, exacerbated by the often ambiguous and multiple roles of government in these arrangements (Cook, 2009;Davies, 2002;Hodge and Greve, 2010). Critics have also raised concerns about private-sector-led governance including problems of democratic legitimacy (Kort and Klijn, 2013), spatial inequality (De Magalhães, 2014) and other concerns of 'legality, transparency, accountability, risk assessment, allocation, stakeholder involvement, [and] governance' . Urban redevelopment partnerships between governments and the private sector have even been used by governments to deflect public protest over undesirable development outcomes or to obscure potentially unpopular strategies of privatisation (Davies, 2011).…”

“…Despite their prevalence, urban partnerships are still considered by some scholars as 'a slippery and complex institutional arrangement' (Ruming, 2009a). Scholarship on PPPs in urban development has traditionally focused on projects for infrastructure provision (Hodge and Greve, 2007;Johnston, 2010;Koppenjan and Enserink, 2009); and urban renewal and regeneration in cities, including private-sector-led business improvement districts (Ball and Maginn, 2005;Brownill, 2003;Carley, 2000;Davies, 2002;De Magalhães, 2014;Jonas and McCarthy, 2009;Ruming, 2009b). Indeed, the goals of many traditional urban regeneration projects have, incidentally, aligned with objectives often associated with climate responses in cities (i.e.…”

The CO‐City: Sharing, Collaborating, Cooperating, and Commoning in the City

“…They are another tool of collaborative governance, mostly developed in American and British cities. BIDs in London “embody a transfer of governance powers from local government to a business‐led entity,” where said entity has the power to “make decisions about, and deliver services and improvements in that area, according to an agenda set out by those businesses with voting rights” (De Magalhaes ).…”

Business improvement districts in the UK: a review and synthesis

“…He further identifies three main issues emerging from the debates that have occurred about the role of BIDs as public realm governance mechanisms. First, the extent to which BIDs represent the privatisation of the governance of public spaces (De Magalhães, 2014 – see also Steel and Symes, 2005). Indeed, BIDs could be regarded as an aspect of the increasing privatisation in urban development policy, where they represent a partial transfer of the delivery of public services to private sector actors.…”

“…Second, there is debate concerning the democratic accountability in the consequent decisions involving the public realm (De Magalhães, 2014). Steel and Symes (2005, p. 326), for example, articulate a range of “potential problems with BIDs”, in particular relating to their democratic accountability, operational factors, such as “who pays how much and who gets to decide how the money raised is spent” (Steel and Symes, 2005, p. 327), and, linked to this, voting structures within individual BIDs.…”