Business Improvement Districts and Contemporary Local Governance

Abstract

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) have become an increasingly prevalent method for contemporary public management and economic revitalization. BIDs are private non-profit organizations established primarily in urban areas to deliver public services and improve economic conditions by imposing additional assessments on property owners. This dynamic allows improvement districts to serve as quasi-public entities inextricably intertwined with local policy measures and government officials, while concurrently operating as private organizations. This paper begins by providing an introduction outlining the role BIDs play in modern local governance, followed by a brief overview of the historical progression of improvement district implementation in cities. The contemporary state of debate surrounding the efficacy and implications of BIDs on local governance is then reviewed, while discussing the impact of recent research on the field of study. It concludes by reflecting on proliferation of improvement districts as an entity for modern public service delivery, as well as suggesting future directions for research pertaining to BIDs.

The Money Behind the Curtain: Measuring the Financial Condition of Special District Governments in Illinois

“…Special districts are attractive for general-purpose local governments due to their structural flexibility and low political visibility (Axelrod, 1992), their financial powers of issuing tax-exempt bonds and levying of taxes, thus offering a large array of services that are off budget from local governments (Leigland, 1990). At the same time, they are criticized for a lack or limited financial transparency and accountability (Deslatte et al, 2021;Greer et al, 2018;Scutelnicu & Ganapati, 2012;Ziebarth, 2020). Although some special districts or the states in which they exist do publish financial data, rarely is the financial condition of special districts scrutinized at the same level as other local governments.…”

Business Improvement Districts: A Systematic Review of an Urban Governance Model towards City Center Revitalization

“…Moreover, understanding BIDs as a model for town centre revitalization also means that one must be aware (as Ward [41] noted) that often, within the policy transfer to other countries, BIDs may assume other designations, such as 'special improvement districts', 'public improvement districts', or 'downtown improvement districts' [41] (p. 6580); this introduces a new layer of complexity in providing a definition of BIDs that can be broad enough to capture its heterogeneity. Most definitions, thus, tend to be inclusive, such as Ziebarth's [52] (p. 128) definition: "BIDs are private non-profit organizations established primarily in urban areas to deliver public services and improve economic conditions by imposing additional assessments on property owners" or Han et al's [51] (p. 659): "BIDs are self-assessment districts that are enabled by state laws, authorized by local governments, and approved by property owners, with the purpose of delivering supplemental public services to the districts". Recognizing the difficulty of elaborating an inclusive definition, several authors tend to focus on the common elements that characterize the different projects.…”