ABSTRACT
Participating, caring for, and being committed to our communities are time-honored concerns, and this certainly includes business communities (Berk, 1976). More and more communities are looking for and finding ways to build successful organized approaches to development, revitalization, and improvements by creating special (business) improvement districts (SIDs). But, do they work? Do they accomplish the intention of enabling legislation? Does this intention, and BIDs specifically, foster public management entrepreneurship? Do BIDs present an effective model for functions of social capital and the practice of public management entrepreneurship (Harvey, 1989)? Do BIDs prove Charles Tiebout’s theory that people are exceedingly concerned about their primary home-based investments (such as home and business), and choose governance programs and services that help manage these investments most effectively (Tiebout, 1956) by voting with their feet; that is, moving to places where their investments have a better chance of succeeding? In the case of BIDs, this concern is an extended reinterpretation of local governance apparently chosen, designed, and implemented by the entrepreneurial citizen as a collective response to asset management. Do BIDs sustain better business investment opportunities? As we delve into these questions, we look at the essential structure and purpose of BIDs, their public and private nature, and the impact of the management of collective and common interests that BIDs represent.
