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DOI: 10.1177/0969776411420019
2012 19: 153European Urban and Regional Studies
Nadine Marquardt and Henning Füller
Spillover of the private city: BIDs as a pivot of social control in downtown Los Angeles
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Introduction
‘BIDs are here to stay – and, moreover, to multiply,
diversify, and innovate.’ (Houstoun, 2003: 142)
The buzzwords ‘urban renaissance’ and ‘new urbanity’
signify a currently growing interest in metropolitan
inner-city living in the Global North (Buzar et al., 2007;
Porter et al., 2009). Research on gentrification has
documented the often profound changes for local
neighbourhoods resulting from this reorientation of
buyers, developers and city planning (Atkinson and
420019
EURXXX10.1177/0969776411420019Marquardt and FüllerEuropean Urban and Regional Studies
Corresponding author:
Dr Henning Füller, Department of Geography, Friedrich-
Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Kochstr. 4/4,
D-91054 Erlangen, Germany
Email: hfueller@geographie.uni-erlangen.de
Spillover of the private city:
BIDs as a pivot of social control
in downtown Los Angeles
Nadine Marquardt
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Henning Füller
Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Abstract
Our paper addresses the complex role of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in current processes of inner-city
restructuring and the function of BIDs in the implementation of new forms of social control in downtown areas. Our
thesis is that, in the context of recent urban renaissance initiatives, BIDs are expanding their ‘clean and safe’ profile
to be a much more comprehensive programme. Their goal is not only to produce safety and cleanliness in the urban
environment but to influence the symbolic dimension of what the city is and for whom it is made. This implies indirect
forms of governing the way in which the city is used, which go unnoticed if BIDs are identified solely as a tool to create
‘clean and safe’ public space. We will substantiate this claim with a case study on the current restructuring of downtown
Los Angeles (L.A.). Since 1999, downtown L.A. has been profoundly ‘revitalized’ as a living and entertainment district
for affluent residents. The nine BIDs covering the main parts of the downtown play an important role in making this
gentrification happen by providing the appropriate context for restructuring. Beyond overt measures such as security
forces or CCTV, the BIDs also have an important impact on the ‘geographical imagination’ (Harvey, 1973) of the
city. The examples elucidate the anticipation of a broadening field of activity for BIDs, not only in securing an ‘urban
renaissance’ but also in framing the way it is performed symbolically.
Keywords
BID, public space, social control, urban governance, urban security
Article
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154 European Urban and Regional Studies 19(2)
Bridge, 2005; Lees et al., 2007). One important aspect
of change relates to questions of security, the accessi-
bility and quality of public spaces, and the employment
of security-oriented policies (MacLeod and Ward,
2002: 162; Atkinson and Helms, 2007; Helms et al.,
2007). In this paper we address the complex role of
BIDs within these processes of inner-city restructur-
ing.
1
As Jerry Mitchell observes, BIDs play an impor-
tant part in advocating urban renaissance policies: ‘To
varying degrees, BIDs are not only actively immersed
in marketing downtown districts and supplementing
sanitation and security services in both large and small
cities; they are also very involved advocating down-
town revitalization policies to citizens and local offi-
cials’ (Mitchell, 2001: 121; see also Ward, 2007). As a
case study from downtown Los Angeles will illustrate,
BIDs contribute to the production of space in a wider
sense, shaping the public imaginary of urban neigh-
bourhoods. In our case study, BIDs play a central role
in establishing a particular concept of ‘urbanity’ – with
far-reaching consequences for social life in the inner
city. In the numerous practices and interventions at the
local level either conducted or advocated by the BIDs,
the inner city is exclusively conceived as a ‘live, work
and play’ environment for the affluent middle and
upper classes and is thus shaped accordingly. As BIDs
have also become an international model of revitaliza-
tion (Ward, 2006: 55), it is important to acknowledge
this wider impact of BID policies, going far beyond the
provision of ‘submunicipal local goods like sanitation,
security and capital improvements’ (Hoyt and Gopal-
Agge, 2007: 949) that is usually described in the litera-
ture. As our case study shows, BIDs take part in
producing an extended assemblage of social infrastruc-
ture, security arrangements, regulations, forms of sur-
veillance and a new degree of social control in addition
to – and beyond – ‘safe and clean’ public space.
Conceptually we reach back into the toolset of
recent power theory to capture the whole range of
BID practices and their effects in our case study. For
example, Michel Foucault (1982) has created an
understanding of ‘governing’ that includes both the
direct forms of regulating conduct and the indirect
effects of a so-called ‘power/knowledge’ nexus.
Building on Foucault’s works, governmentality
studies have developed a nuanced conceptual toolkit
to analyse activities of social ordering and governing
in terms of their political rationalities (Rose and
Miller, 1992; Osborne and Rose, 1998, 1999; Isin,
2000). Applying these concepts in our context allows
an analysis of the work and self-conception of the
BIDs as part of a multifaceted interplay of power
relations structuring the way in which urban space
and its appropriate uses and users are imagined and
governed. The approach may help us to understand
the connections between the contingent exercise of
power in local settings – where the formal structures
and the activities of BIDs have achieved a great deal
of variation (see Hochleutner, 2003: 279) and where
actors often just seem to act upon what they perceive
as concrete problems without further reflecting on
the ‘powerful definitions of truth about best cities’
(McCann, 2008: 897) that their practices produce –
and the overarching rationalities of governing that
are being (re)configured here (Rose and Miller,
1992; Dean, 1999; Rose, 1999; Legg, 2005; Huxley,
2006). Special emphasis is put on the role of space as
a catalytic element in this power/knowledge nexus.
As Mustafa Dikeç argues, ‘urban policy is guided by
particular ways of imagining space, and different
ways of imagining space have different implications
for the constitution of perceived problems and pro-
posed solutions’ (Dikeç, 2007: 287). The same argu-
ment is sustained by Steve Herbert and Elizabeth
Brown, who claim that ‘space is not just impacted by
neoliberal policies, but . . . its conceptualization
importantly helps legitimate those policies’ (Herbert
and Brown, 2006: 756). Policy strategies developed
by the BIDs, as well as implicit processes of restruc-
turing the ‘geographical imagination’ (Harvey, 1973)
of the city, can equally be conceived and analysed as
differentiated outcomes of local power struggles,
contextualized in a ‘near-universal embracing of a
particular model of urban revitalization’ (Ward,
2007: 782) currently taking place in many cities in
the Global North (Porter et al., 2009).
The case study is part of a research project that
focused on the restructuring of downtown Los
Angeles (L.A.), an urban restructuring initiative
undertaken by private actors and public–private part-
nerships, and, at the same time, was a process where
the notion of an ‘urban renaissance’ was widely cel-
ebrated and an omnipresent subject in the debate.
Important aspects of this urban governance process
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Marquardt and Füller 155
that we focused on were not only the policies and
actors but also ‘their perceptions, action repertoires,
policy discourses and embedded cultural assump-
tions’ (Coaffee and Healey, 2003: 1982). As a late-
comer in the current wave of inner-city revitalization,
downtown L.A. provides an excellent case to study
contemporary ideas and visions accompanying the
‘urban renaissance’ in which the new downtown is
supposed to be safe and clean, convenient and
healthy, yet at the same time also exciting and lively,
diverse and ‘edgy’. Our thesis is that the BIDs here
are involved in an organized staging of urbanity,
ambitiously supporting the experience of consuming
urban space as a ‘life, work, play’ landscape.
Empirically, we retraced the debates and argu-
ments surrounding the ongoing ‘renaissance’ of
downtown L.A. mainly through interviews with BID
representatives, real-estate developers and city offi-
cials. Press releases by the BIDs and their different
self-portrayals and revitalization strategies provided
empirical material as well. We have used this mate-
rial in addition to several field trips to get a compre-
hensive overview of the numerous activities
deployed by the BIDs and other actors to sustain the
process of restructuring downtown L.A., to promote
new urban living and to help make the process a suc-
cessful endeavour. In the process of inner-city
restructuring, BIDs play a central role, but they are
certainly not the only actor pursuing the goal of
transforming the downtown into a ‘live, work, play’
environment. Where BIDs go beyond their narrow
‘safe and clean’ profile and further participate in
transforming the ‘geographical imagination’ of the
inner city, they also forge partnerships with other
actors (in our case, most notably with real-estate
developers) to achieve their goals.
Using the conceptual lens of governmentality
allows us to enquire into the work of BIDs that play
a leading role in sustaining the vision of a new
downtown and to point out the effects of social con-
trol in the inner city produced by this vision: mainly,
we found that the mode of governing social relations
in the city is characterized not only by discipline and
control – as many of the studies on urban security
policies and on BIDs suggest – but also by the fact
that it cultivates a certain degree of difference and is
motivated to manage risk proactively instead of
completely erasing what is conceived of as ‘danger-
ous’. Both the vocabulary and the policy practices –
influenced in particular by Richard Florida’s concept
of the ‘creative class’ (2002) – now pursue the idea
that a manageable, ‘colourful’ degree of irritation
and uncertainty may even be considered helpful in
order to establish authentic (and, thus, marketable)
urban aesthetics.
As Kevin Ward has noted, ‘[t]he “cool” and “cre-
ative” city may be the new policy kid on the block,
but both discursively and substantively what this
means for the urban politics of revitalization bears
more than a passing resemblance to the entrepre-
neurial urbanism of the late-20th century’ (Ward,
2007: 782). BIDs themselves have accompanied and
sustained this evolution of neoliberal urban policies
by supplementing the heavy-handed disciplinary
measures they started out with. This is not to say that
BIDs have in any way slackened their efforts to cre-
ate ‘safe streets’, a goal that both in the past and in
the present often translates into aggressive
approaches towards the uses and users of public
space deemed ‘problematic’. But BIDs have in fact
extended this package of measures by developing
management strategies to proactively promote the
use of the city as a ‘life, work, play’ landscape.
‘Revitalization’ in downtown Los
Angeles
Although Los Angeles is certainly a somewhat over-
used example in urban studies, especially in the field
of security-related urban governance (Soja, 1986;
Davis, 1990; Loukaitou-Sideris, 1993; Dear and
Flusty, 1998, 2001; Caldeira, 1999), we think that in
many regards the ‘urban renaissance’ currently taking
place in downtown L.A. provides an excellent case to
study recent visions of inner-city restructuring and
conceptions of urban living now operating under the
buzzwords of ‘revitalization’ and ‘renaissance’ and
also for the important role BIDs play in safeguarding
the renaissance by establishing the necessary environ-
ment and security arrangements.
Since 1999, the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance has
permitted developers to convert vacant office and
commercial space into residential use in the
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156 European Urban and Regional Studies 19(2)
downtown area of Los Angeles. The passing of the
ordinance was the initial trigger for a redevelopment
boom that has been taking place ever since. This
‘unprecedented renaissance’ (DCBID, 2007a) is fur-
ther sustained by the completion of several landmark
entertainment developments such as the STAPLES
Center, L.A. LIVE and the Walt Disney Concert
Hall. The main focus of the redevelopment initiative,
however, is to bring new residents into the area.
More than 7000 new and Adaptive Reuse housing
units had been built up to 2002 (DCBID, 2007a).
The initial speed of this process surprised even long-
time observers.
At the same time, the disparity between the new
downtown aimed for by a range of actors including
the various local BIDs and the current popular per-
ception of downtown could hardly be greater. For
decades, the degree of urban blight in most of its
neighbourhoods has been extremely high, sustaining
the district’s image as a ‘ghost town’ after business
hours. Furthermore, the eastern part of downtown
L.A., also known as Skid Row, has the largest con-
centration of homeless individuals in Los Angeles
County. In 2007, a street count revealed more than
5000 homeless people in the downtown area
(LAHSA, 2007).
This point of departure has led to a restructuring
process beset with social tensions. The influx of
financially well-off residents into the newly built
residential developments has produced an intense
spatial proximity of social realities that could not be
any more polarized. Up to now, the Skid Row area
was commonly perceived as a ‘no-go area’, and
often the only people frequenting the neighbourhood
from outside, aside from the homeless, were police-
men, paramedics and social workers. Now Adaptive
Reuse developments are marketed as luxury resi-
dences and sold at prices comparable to develop-
ments in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. At the
same time, a few blocks away or sometimes even in
the same streets, shelters provide beds for the home-
less, SRO hotels offer precarious housing or people
put up tents to sleep outside. This highly charged
situation brought about by the redevelopment initia-
tive is very likely to initiate processes of displace-
ment, even though this is publicly denied by the
developers (Lacter, 2005: 1). The restructuring of
downtown L.A. and the influx of well-heeled new
residents into the buildings around Skid Row have
put new pressures on the local actors to improve and
secure the area and to regulate the urban poor. Many
of the private actors and public–private partnerships
involved in the redevelopment process have singled
out the presence of homeless people and the visibil-
ity of homelessness within the area as the main
obstacle to achieving the much sought-after urban
renaissance.
‘Downtown Los Angeles is on the cusp of an urban
renaissance. . . . However, this renaissance is threatened
every day by street encampments, drug deals,
overdoses, and panhandlers.’ (CCA, 2002: 7)
Private actors have repeatedly challenged the city to
solve the safety problems in the downtown area to
make it possible to capitalize on the economic ben-
efits of downtown L.A.’s renaissance. An overt
example is a policy paper issued in 2002 by the
Central City Association (CCA) of Los Angeles. The
CCA is a business organization advocating legisla-
tive initiatives that ease investment in downtown
L.A. and is the founder of the Downtown Center
Business Improvement District (DCBID). The eco-
nomic rationale operating in the CCA’s strategies
demands immediate change. Otherwise, according
to the CCA, ‘big businesses, entrepreneurs, workers,
shoppers, residents, and tourists will not live, work,
or play in a place they believe is unhealthy and
unsafe’ (CCA, 2002: 7). These claims resonate well
with the demand for security practices in the after-
math of a physical regeneration of the downtown
area predicted early in the literature (Mair, 1986;
Mallett, 1994).
And yet the unique ‘edgy urban atmosphere’
problematized here also serves as an important sell-
ing feature and needs to be preserved according to
many of the BID representatives, real-estate devel-
opers, sales agents and other actors we spoke to. The
newly built residential developments are uniformly
marketed as the ‘ultimate form of urban living’
(Packard Lofts), as the ‘most exciting living experi-
ence’ (South Project) and as places to ‘feel the elec-
tricity of the city’ (Little Tokyo Lofts). The
conflicting objectives informing the restructuring of
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