Private sector involvement in urban governance: The case of Business Improvement Districts and Town Centre Management partnerships in England

Abstract

Although it has many merits, the voluminous literature on urban governance gives scant attention to the actual involvement and positioning of business elites and businesses within Public-Private Partnerships. There is also little consensus among academics as to why the private sector become involved in such schemes. This paper begins to address these issues through a critical empirical examination of how and why the private sector is involved with three English Town Centre Management (TCM) partnerships and the Business Improvement District (BID) subsidiaries all three partnerships have recently developed. In order to do this, the empirical study is guided by a conceptual framework that foregrounds the relationship between (a) the opening up and monitoring of 'institutional space' by partnerships and the state, and (b) the motivations and 'constrained agency' of the business elites. The paper demonstrates that the positioning of the private sector is more multifarious and fractured than previous studies of urban governance have suggested. It also reveals that business elites and businesses view their participation as an 'investment' that needs to accrue significant financial returns and that partnership and state officials are highly selective in their choice of 'who governs'.

Business Improvement Associations and Public Area Video Surveillance in Canadian Cities

“…Recognising that not all BIAs have the same resources or identical ideas about how to address crime (see Lippert, 2012;Cook, 2009Cook, , 2008Ward, 2007), we demonstrate that BIA involvement in implementation of public video surveillance programmes across Canada has not been as uniform as urban studies literature on neo-liberalism and security in the city might suggest. BIAs share the 'clean and safe' mantra as a start point, with the aim of making consumption districts amenable to competitive commercial ventures and fostering what have variably been referred to as neo-liberal cities (Peck and Tickell, 2002), competitive cities (Kipfer and Keil, 2002) and revanchist cities (Smith, 1996).…”

“…BIAs attempt to carry out 'clean and safe' revitalisation projects through business promotions, beautification, street-cleaning, fac xade regeneration and graffiti removal (see Lippert and Sleiman, 2011;Cook, 2009;Ward, 2007). Due to the common emphasis on consumption, cleanliness and order maintenance, questions have been raised about whether BIAs can genuinely represent community interests.…”

New Forms of Urban Governance: Business Improvement Districts and the Challenges of Their Introduction in Spain

“…Plan must receive the majority affirmative vote of numbers of voters and also, the rateable value (the open market rental value, based on an estimate by the Valuation Office Agency) of the properties of the business owners who voted in favour must be higher than the rateable value of the properties of those who voted against (Cook, 2009). …”

Empowerment of the institutional-managerial structure by urban sustainable development approach and fuzzy QSPM

“…The middle level of institutional empowerment is related to the type of interaction and communications between urban formal and informal institutions (local communities, etc.) [15]; this occurs under the form of a series of horizontal and synergic communications, which promote a dynamic, efficient and effective urban management structure.…”