Neighborhood Business Improvement District Planning: Representative Collaboration in Philadelphia

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are an increasingly popular format for sustainably providing supplemental services and enhancements to neighborhood-scale commercial corridors and their surrounds. Some have argued that they are a neoliberal mechanism for privatization of community production that ought to be commonly held, an antidemocratic institution that favors an elite marginal class of property owners. In contrast, others view BIDs as instruments for effective and representative commons management, devices that create opportunities for participative citizenship and collectively pool resources for the benefit of many. This thesis describes the processes of planning and establishing BIDs in the Philadelphia neighborhoods of Northern Liberties and Fishtown. It sites them in the context of Pennsylvania’s unique BID legislation and employs theories of the commons to evaluate the collaborative community definition that they underwent. Their cases qualitatively demonstrate that neighborhood BID planning can produce truly representative BIDs. Part I contains an introductory statement of purpose and methodology. In Part II, I situate this project in the literature on BIDs and their controversies, and cover the particular history of Pennsylvania’s legislative basis and how it impacts BIDs in Philadelphia. I also suggest that the urban implications of certain theories of the commons can form a basis for optimal neighborhood BID planning. Part III contains my case studies, fronted by a contextualization of the two neighborhoods. Lastly, in Part IV I present my analysis, evaluating these neighborhood planning processes as considerations of unique community contexts and the particular BID scales and forms that followed.M.S., Urban Strategy -- Drexel University, 201