Community BIAs as Practices of Assemblage: Contingent Politics in the Neoliberal City

Abstract

Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) are a domain of urban governance that has been aptly characterized as a form of neoliberal urbanization aimed at improving the business climate of downtowns. This paper engages with a growing body of literature on contingent neoliberal urbanisms to consider BIAs as an assemblage of coevolving projects and actors. It focuses specifically on two 'community' BIAs in Toronto's downtown West, where recent actions of differently positioned stakeholders effectively reveal how multiple agendas can inform BIA practices. Our objective is twofold: (a) to draw attention to tbe practices of smaller, community-based BIAs that predominate in North America; and (b) to explore the analytical and political openings that arise when institutions commonly identified as neoliberal are investigated as an assemblage of related but distinctive and sometimes disjunctive projects.

“Our Public Library”: Social reproduction and urban public space in Toronto

“…Although public spaces have become an important terrain on which to understand neoliberalization, public libraries are strikingly absent from these debates. Geographers emphasize how public spaces shopping malls, BIAs, plazas, parks, and sidewalks -are reworked to privilege consumption, to exclude people without acceptably lifestyle or income, and to quell democratic uses of public space (Low, Taplin, & Scheld, 2005;Rankin & Delaney, 2011;Staeheli & Mitchell, 2004). Policing and disciplinary control of public spaces has intensified in North America, such that the "right to simply be" in urban public spaces is criminalized or subject to sanction, which has meant that poor and marginalized people must develop new ad hoc strategies to survive (Beckett & Herbert, 2010;Blomley, 2004;Mitchell & Heynen, 2009).…”

Sari vs. Dim Sum – Business Improvement Areas and the Branding of Toronto's Ethnic Neighbourhoods

“…Assumed to lead to economic flourishing, the trickling down of Florida's ‘fast policy’ into Toronto's Culture Plan for the Creative City illustrates how ethnic diversity is commodified into a branding strategy under neoliberal conditions, while at the same time displaying how arts and culture facilitates gentrification (Lehrer & Wieditz ). In this understanding of urban development, inequality and marginalised groups are incorporated and commodified as ‘heritage cultures’ or ‘ethnic dining’ (Goonewardena & Kipfer ; Rankin & Delaney ).…”

Cracks in the Creative City: The Contradictions of Community Arts Practice

“…The interventions that O'Donnell refers to echo feminist scholars who challenge ‘all or nothing’ (Larner, ) accounts of neoliberalism's reach and durability. Politicized projects remind us of the always‐present potential to respond to and intervene in situated and contingent market‐oriented initiatives (see Rankin and Delaney, ; Kern, ). Larner and Craig () have made similar claims about the potential for community‐based organizations to forefront critical dialogue and diversity in neoliberal policymaking and partnership building.…”