Collecting Private Funds for Safer Public Spaces: An Empirical Examination of the Business Improvement District Concept

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are a popular economic development tool as evidenced by their proliferation from North America to Africa to Europe. In an effort to provide investors, visitors, and residents with more secure public spaces, the majority of BID organizations pay for supplemental security and sanitation services. Following a brief discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of the BID concept, this study describes BID security and sanitation programs and evaluates their impact on patterns of criminal activity in the City of Philadelphia using a customized goegraphic information system. Further, it introduces a point-based method of analysis that simultaneously considers the spatial and temporal characteristics of individual crime incidents. Results from this quantitative–qualitative study suggest that BID security services have a deterrent effect on such criminal activities as theft and burglary. Additionally, this paper makes the case that, as BID organizations continue to emerge, it is imperative that we develop more sophisticated models for evaluating their potential impacts. Controversies, like whether BIDs cause wealth-based inequalities in the delivery of public services, remain viable avenues for future research.