Business improvement districts: A new form of public-private partnership for socioeconomic revitalization of urban areas

Abstract

This paper presents Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), which after a US wide expansion have started to appear in Europe. Pursuant to this expansion, right now appears to be the perfect time to become familiar with BID and assess its convenience in Spanish cities.

A BID is a public-private partnership scheme, which aims at socioeconomically revitalizing specific urban areas. The biggest attribute for BID is having the legal ability to levy the businesses located in its area. These resources are used to provide the area with extra services, which could improve its competitiveness.

The goals of this article are to present the BID description; to let all interested sectors like consump-tion and retail, public-space management, and cities’ governance know the scheme; and to suggest some important factors that the future BID implantation decision should take into consideration.

In order to present these goals, this topic has been made a BID-themed literature review; furthermore, as a part of the researching, the author has succeeded in the Business District Management course regarding BID’s management, offered by Rutgers University of Newark (New Jersey, USA), and completed vigorous, on-line research concerning the recent European experiences.

By examining BIDs’ proliferation, the article concludes that the project as a whole has been a success; however, BIDs’ application is a polemic decision and requires balancing the possible appearance of uncertain complications before taking this step.