Business Improvement Districts
By: Star Childs
Tags: Knowledge Management, Mapping, Community, Civictech, Innovation

The Neighborhood City // 3

These local community-based organizations are changing everything for cities, particularly in North America, and here’s why…

Have you ever heard of a Business Improvement District, or BID for short? These local community-based organizations are changing everything for cities, particularly in North America, and here’s why:

In the 1970s, a new type of community development organization emerged out of the need for local economic resiliency in downtowns. During this time, cities and downtowns across the US and Canada experienced a substantial loss of capital due to the migration of people into the suburbs. In the 1970s major downtowns and cities like New York were not the higher quality urban environments we know of today’s downtowns. By this time many residents and businesses had already migrated to the suburbs for what seemed like a better quality of life. The suburban lifestyle presented an affordable opportunity particularly for the middle class to invest in a piece of land, get out of the over-crowded city, and even own a personal automobile able to take them with family and friends anywhere the government had invested in roads and infrastructure. The popularity of suburban lifestyles significantly deteriorated the economic vitality of many cities and downtowns, and subsequently increased our dependence on an already booming fossil fuel-based economy.

As population densities shifted from concentrated in historic downtowns to dispersed throughout new sprawling suburbs, property taxes diminished in many cities. With fewer tax dollars to draw on, cities struggled to provide essential public services, such as public safety and sanitation. The quality of life in North America’s cities reached an all-time low as public streets, parks, and sidewalks were neglected and let go.

Bryant Park, early 1980's

In many downtown areas, the people that owned commercial real estate and businesses had a difficult decision to make; either relocate and invest in a business or in real estate outside the city where they could attract suburban shoppers and visitors, or stay in the city and invest locally. Yet as an individual business owner or property owner, the amount of local investment this single stakeholder could afford to make was unlikely to have any meaningful impact.

As business owners and commercial real estate owners struggled to keep their downtown investments alive, a third option began to emerge. They decided that if they worked together as a community collectively investing in the public space around their businesses and properties, and adding the services that the local government was unable to maintain, they could improve the area and revive economic activity for their businesses.

This new model for community-based investment and development took hold as a solution many cities drastically needed. As a result, the most formally organized type of neighborhood organization in the world was established. Today in Toronto, where the first of these organizations was officially formed, there are now 86 of them operating what are called Business Improvement Areas, or BIA’s. The specific name for them often varies city-to-city, but the most common name is a Business Improvement District (BID).

Bryant Park, April 2016 — twenty-four years after the park was reopened with private funding from the adjacent commercial property owners, as well as sponsors. — photo by Citiesense

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)

A BID is a community-based development model that establishes a local non-profit organization to align funding from public and private sources with opportunities to improve the management of public space in a specific commercially active area. This model of grassroots community development was successful when the quality of life in North America’s greatest cities reached an all-time low, and it continues to add value today in cities of all sizes.

BIDs are uniquely funded. This sets them apart from other, more traditional, place-based community organizations. A BID’s annual revenue comes from a special tax all property owners in the district have elected to pay in addition to their annual property taxes to the city. In return, BIDs are responsible for coordinating and providing supplemental services that the members of the organization decide will add strategic value to the neighborhood. (IDA | What Do BIDs Do? What Can BIDs Do?) The goal of a BID is to attract more people to live, work and shop there on behalf of the commercial property owners and their tenants. To achieve this goal and measure the local impact, BIDs often keep track of all the assets that shape a person’s experience with the neighborhood. Assets include elements of the public realm such as streets and street furniture, trees/plantings, and transportation infrastructure. Assets also include privately owned commercial properties and the mix of businesses operating in those spaces. With accurate data about all properties, contacts and streetscape conditions inside their district, BIDs maintain a valuable neighborhood-wide knowledge base in order to measure the performance of the neighborhood based on economic indicators over time.

Neighborhood Knowledge

Managing data for an entire neighborhood is no easy task. The most progressive BIDs look for ways technology can assist in this process in order to do this job effectively. Neighborhood data, like city data, is fragmented and dispersed among numerous sources. Analyzing and sharing location-based information from a variety of disconnected sources without a map-based data management system presents technical challenges.

To solve this issue, BIDs and other groups that manage data about their district and neighborhood-scale areas are adopting software solutions that connect several different datasets together around a single map-based data management interface. These unique new platforms are a combination of two types of software platforms that are more common and well known today. One is mapping technology, similar to complex GIS tools, which are moving online and becoming easier to use for cloud-based services. The other is team-oriented data management and collaboration software often referred to as knowledge management platforms or productivity software. This second type of software is generally relied on by large corporate organizations to manage and analyze operations across multiple departments and hundreds of employees.

There are several advantages for BIDs that adopt a platform that’s designed to keep track of all neighborhood data in one place, including:

Time saved by BID staff performing operations, such as tasks that involve looking up information and tracking the condition of different assets in the district.

Improved data analysis and decision making by establishing a framework for local data that supports better access to accurate information.

Better community engagement by sharing maps and other visualizations to share local information with community members and stakeholders.

At Citiesense, we call this a “Neighborhood Knowledge Platform”. The platform consolidates the workflows of the BID’s staff, as well as community members, around a single map-based toolkit for collecting, managing and analyzing data about the neighborhood and all of the neighborhood’s assets. Assets include elements of the public realm and streets, such as bicycle racks, lamp posts, planters, and tree pits, as well as the commercial spaces and the mix of different local businesses that might occupy these spaces. With the data managed in a centralized map-based platform, the BID is able to quickly analyze and share information with local community members, city agencies, and other third parties outside of the community. This helps with regular community development workflows such as managing content on websites and blogs for marketing, creating annual and quarterly reports for local stakeholders and coordinating with city agencies and property owners to address any outstanding issues with assets in the neighborhood.

Optimizing how local organizations organize their workflows around a purpose-built solution enables cities to collect more accurate local data. BIDs are well-positioned to perform this role, and in many cases, BIDs already do. For a BID, being “data-driven” helps in two key areas:

(1) Data to support proposals externally for capital projects, private investment and/or public funds; and

(2) Data to promote awareness internally of their value to BID stakeholders and other members of the community.

In addition to the value that a BID’s local data can create for the city as a whole, BIDs also have the opportunity to launch a private portal for local information about real estate and street life that is only accessible to their organization’s membership. When a BID leverages this mix of “Smart Cities” technologies and a map-based data management platform, the information the community maintains can be the most accurate and valuable insight about a neighborhood. This includes data about real estate such as commercial vacancy trends and details about active and past tenants. It also includes data about street conditions, pedestrian behaviors, and traffic patterns.

Place-based community organizations can use technology like Citiesense to keep track of the neighborhood and start building a valuable knowledge base to improve quality of life in their downtown area.

Cities need to collect better, more accurate and actionable data on how urban areas are performing in order for decision-makers to be more proactively involved with the evolution of different neighborhoods going forward. BIDs are at the apex of where public and private sector collaboration fuels the type of innovation cities need today in order to solve the most complex urban challenges. Those cities that embrace local innovation and empower neighborhoods to organize as communities and work together are better positioned to leverage data for economic development. With technology like Citiesense, any group of local business owners and commercial property owners can start to keep track of the neighborhood and begin building a valuable knowledge base to improve the quality of life in their downtown area.