The paper considers the following components: business and problems of modernization of former industrial areas, as one of the important trends forming urban development stability. It is revealed that the social factor is not considered, which also prevents city are as from transforming and business from developing. Reconstructing urban space while handling former industrial areas is becoming a growing problem of cities and requires that business community should be involved in this sector. The specific role of business here is that these objects are located in residential neighborhoods and are closely connected with the social factor (population). Itimplies that the social factor need to be considered and leads to additional costs. Business does not want to participate in bearing these costs, there is no attractive model, and authorities can not fully cover all the costs by themselves. Citizens protest if the transformations violate their interests, which is accompanied by risks for capital, business and government bodies. Within a market economy, citizens are a business structure too, since they have an impact on capital. To solve the problem it is necessary to search for a new form of interaction between the three structures: business, state andcitizens. The author suggests a new model of interaction between the participants of the process, which, in her opinion, if applied in practice, is able to activate business development and accelerate the transformation of depressed areas, thereby contributing to the sustainable development of a city.