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Urban Geography, 2007, 28, 8, pp. 781808. DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.28.8.781Copyright 2007 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

CREATING A PERSONALITY FOR DOWNTOWN:BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS IN MILWAUKEE1

Kevin Ward2

School of Environment and Development

University of Manchester

Manchester, United Kingdom

Abstract: This paper uses a case study of Business Improvement Districts in downtownMilwaukee to illustrate two key trends in contemporary urban revitalization. First, it highlightsthe ways in which the relationship between the public and private sectors continues to be recon-figured in the governance of cities. Second, it considers the roles of Business ImprovementDistricts in light of the current emphasis among urban policymakers and practitioners on deliv-

ering cool and liveable cities. I argue that Business Improvement Districts play a central rolein overseeing the contemporary restructuring of urban space in many U.S. cities. [Key words:entrepreneurial urbanism, cool cities, Business Improvement Districts, downtown redevelop-ment, Milwaukee.]

[B]usiness improvement districts are a response to the failure of local government toadequately maintain and manage spaces of the post-industrial city

William Mallett (1994, p. 284)

The key to BIDs accomplishments lies in their dissimilarity to big city government.

They operate without civil service rules and red tape. BIDs have returned to an earlierset of values regarding public space. They understand that simple thingssuch as keep-

ing sidewalks clean and safematter enormously to the urban quality of life. Theyprovide a vital and dynamic West Berlin to city governments sclerotic East Berlin

Heather MacDonald (1996, n.p.)

INTRODUCTION

Its the citys renaissance. All you have to do is look at our skyline, at the number

of cranes and booms out there. People are interested in staying in or moving to the city.Now, companies are saying, We want to be in the city because more of our employees

1The Worldwide Universities Network, in the form of a Research Mobility Award, and the Leverhulme Trust,in the form of a 2005 Philip Leverhulme Prize, financed the research and writing of this paper. Thanks toEugene McCann and Nate Winkler for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, to the three anonymousreferees and editor Elvin Wyly for their comments on the manuscript, and to Graham Bowden for producingthe figures. And, finally, thanks to all those who gave of their time and their views on the redevelopment ofdowntown Milwaukee. Responsibility for the arguments here is mine alone.2Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kevin Ward, Geography, School of Environmentand Development, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom; tele-phone: 44-161-275-7877; fax: 44-161-275-7878; e-mail: [email protected]


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live here. So recently exclaimed the mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett (quoted in theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 5, 2007). Like his predecessor, that doyen of NewUrbanism, John Norquist, whose 1998 The Wealth of Cities did much to make clear thelinks between this movement and the wider neoliberalization of many U.S. cities (Kennyand Zimmerman, 2003), the current mayor of Milwaukee is placing the downtown andsurrounding neighborhoods at the center of his economic development program. It isthis millenniums prime destination he has said elsewhere, echoing the sentiments ofhis fellow mayors across the United States, who have also been quick to highlightthe (potential and realized) role of their downtowns and adjacent neighborhoods in theoverall performance of their cities. From Boston to San Francisco, Austin to Seattle, theeconomic and political elite of so-called first, second, and third tier cities have,almost without fail, set about turning their downtowns into what Harvey (2000) has

termed developers utopias. Influenced by the language used in, and the policyprescriptions that have emerged out of, Richard Floridas (2002) work, among others, thepast 10 years have seen seminars and panels organized on the cool and the creativecity in many U.S. town halls. Civic salvationists (Wilson and Grammenos, 2000) havecome together to set out a new, more civil urban vision. This apparently near-universalembracing of a particular model of urban revitalization is of course more differentiatedand varied than perhaps some accounts suggest. The policy genes may be the same,but what this actually means in places as diverse as Lafayette, Louisiana and Lafayette,Indiana is, of course, quite different, reflecting a number of cultural and social, institu-tional, and political economic differences.

Nevertheless, and even allowing for some not inconsequential differences between thestrategies pursued by coalitions in U.S. cities, it does seem that the 21st century has begunwith a new U.S. urban development orthodoxy in place, albeit one that shares much incommon with its predecessors. The cool and the creative city may be the new policykid on the block, but both discursively and substantively what this means for the urbanpolitics of revitalization bears more than a passing resemblance to the entrepreneurialurbanism of the late-20th century (Leitner, 1990; Roberts and Schein, 1993; Hall andHubbard, 1996; Jessop, 1997, 1998; Ward, 2003). Cities continue to be centers for con-spicuous consumption and cultural innovation as Harvey (1989a, p. 48) put it, and inter-urban competition for the consumption and the residential dollar remains fierce, even ifthere has been a change in the language in which it is couched.

This article examines the Business Improvement District model of downtown gover-nance, those institutional innovations that have, according to supporters, changed theway America governs its shopping districts, commercial areas, and downtowns(Hochleutner, 2003, p. 374). Claimed to be one of the most important developments inlocal governance in the last two decades (MacDonald, 1996, n.p.), the growth in thenumber of Business Improvement Districts across the United States, and beyond (Briffault,1999; Garodnick, 2000; Ryan, 2000; Mitchell, 2001a, 2001b; Houstoun, 2005; Simone-Gross, 2005; Hoyt, 2006; Stokes, 2006; Ward, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) has accompanied theemergence of creativity as the new Black among urban policymakers and practitio-ners (Peck, 2007). Despite the growing attention of geographers, planners, politicalscientists, and sociologists (Clough and Vanderbeck, 2006; Justice and Goldsmith, 2006;Meek and Hubler, 2006; Morl and Zimmerman, 2006), we are still some way short ofbeing able to reveal what activities in those central-city neighborhoods where the


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creative economy is really supposed to happen (Peck, 2007, n.p.) mean in the context ofthe wider processes of urban politicaleconomic restructuring of which they are part.

The focus in this study is on the role of Business Improvement Districts in the ways inwhich downtowns are governed, on the processes rather than on the outcomes. To addressthis issue, I draw on semi-structured interviews with the chairs and executive directors(senior figures) of Business Improvement Districts in Milwaukee, performed in July2005 as part of a wider study of Wisconsins Business Improvement Districts. These cen-tered on four themes: (1) the local context for the formation of the Business Improve-ment District; (2) the relationships between the Business Improvement District and othersinvolved in the revitalization of the downtown and neighboring central areas; (3) the pol-icies of the Business Improvement Districts; and (4) the contradictions and tensionsbound up in the activities of the Business Improvement District. In addition, I gathered

together a range of secondary materials, from policy briefs to state documents, fromnewspaper articles to Business Improvement District annual reports and press releases.

ENTREPRENEURIAL URBANISM, BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS,AND COOL CITIES

Since the late 1970s a large and intellectually diverse body of work has been producedon the changing political economies of North American and Western European cities.Particular attention has been paid to the ways in which the public and private sectors haveworked together in different types of institutional arrangements to oversee a transforma-

tion in the ways in which cities are governed, constituting the emergence of a new urbanpolitics according to Cox (1993), and the types of cities that these new configurationshave produced.3 Writing almost 20 years ago, Harvey (1989b, p. 4) contended that we hadwitnessed the emergence of a general consensus throughout the advanced capitalistworld that positive benefits are to be had by cities taking an entrepreneurial stance toeconomic development. For Brenner and Theodore (2002, p. 21) this consensus has con-stituted the urbanization of neoliberalism, as urban space has been mobilized both formarket-oriented economic growth and elite consumption practices. Smith (1996) hasargued that the transformations in the way U.S. cities are governed, and the types of citiesthat are produced as a result, constitute a revanchist urbanism, a reclaiming of the down-

town for and by the middle classes, as the undeserving poor and the homeless areremoved from the streets, their rights to the city withdrawn (Mitchell, 1997, 2003;Mitchell and Staeheli, 2006; Staeheli and Mitchell, 2007).

Building on Harveys (1989b) widely influential work, a number of subsequent stud-ies have sought to examine conceptually and empirically the variegated ways in whichthis generalized transformation has taken shapecontradictions and allin localitiesacross the cities of the industrialized North. Four findings are particularly worthy ofnote. The first include those on the nature and extent of the changes in the institutional

3According to some, these changes are part of the emergence of the post-political condition, in which there isconsensus on the inevitability of neoliberal capitalism as an economic system, parliamentary democracy as thepolitical ideal, and humanitarianism and inclusive cosmopolitanism as a moral foundation (iek, 1999;Mouffe, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2007).


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arrangements in place to govern cities (Goodwin and Painter, 1996; Imrie and Raco,1999; Ward, 2000), both in terms of a quantitative detailing of those involved in the rede-velopment process, and more qualitatively, the particular ideological underpinnings ofthe urban agendas as policy fit[s] itself to the grooves already established by themarket (Smith, 2002, p. 94). Related to the first, the second set of findings in this workcover the changing agenda, interests, and identities involved in place-based coalitions,partnerships, and regimes, and the theoretical convergences and differences betweenthese terms (Cox and Mair, 1988; Imrie and Thomas, 1995; Peck and Tickell, 1995;Jessop et al., 1999; Valler and Wood, 2004). The third theme in this work entailsdiscourses and representations, and the politics surrounding their mobilization and use,associated with contemporary entrepreneurial modes of urban governance (Wilson, 1996,1998; Jessop, 1997, 1998; McCann, 2002; Ward, 2003). The fourth set of findings

involve the diversity of scales represented and entangled in urban governing forma-tions (Amin and Graham, 1997; Brenner, 1999). Collectively, this sizeable literature thatencompasses an increasing range of theoretical approaches (Wood, 2007, p. 1), has gen-erated a rich set of empirical findings as well as conceptual insights into the changingways in which cities are governed, even if it is not without its limitations (Ward, 2007b).

Business Improvement Districts embody many of these broader changes.4 First estab-lished in the United States during the early 1980s, the formation of Business ImprovementDistricts in many of the nations downtowns reflects how [l]and and property owners ,developers and builders, the local state, and those who hold the mortgage and public debthave much to gain from forging a local alliance to protect their interests and to ward off

the threat of localized devaluation (Harvey, 1989a, p. 149). The formation of a BIDreflects the coming together of localized factions of capital to protect their exchange val-ues. In particular it is commercial, residential, and retail capital that has tended to underpinthe establishment of Business Improvement Districts in U.S. downtowns, translating theireconomic power into the political capacity to shape the way cities evolve.

An institutional means of delivering the revalorization of urban neighborhoods,Business Improvement Districts are portrayed as a more focused and flexible form ofgovernance than large municipal bureaucracies (Levy, 2001, p. 129). Channelingprivate sector agency towards the solution of public problems (MacDonald, 1996,p. 42), they are represented as an alternative to traditional municipal planning and devel-

opment (Mitchell, 2001b, p. 116). Whereas they are publicprivate partnerships, theirestablishment involves public space (parks, streets, and walkways) coming under thecontrol of an institution informed by private interests, and not democratically account-able. In contributing new energy, new resources, and new leadership (Levy, 2001,p. 130) Business Improvement Districts reflect the freeing of entrepreneurial spirit thatis a fundamental aspect of neoliberal urbanization (Wilson, 2004).

Four general aspects of the Business Improvement District model are worth noting.First, through the activities of Business Improvement Districts, urban space has been

4It is important to acknowledge the limitations to what Business Improvement Districts can achieve in terms ofthe material transformation of the downtown built environment. This study argues that their role in the gover-nance of downtowns is important because of what they reveal about our understandings of public andprivate, despite, in many cases, budgets that remain relatively small compared to those of city government.


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differentiated as a mean of securing further economic expansion and intensifying accu-mulation. Lines are drawn around neighborhoods, and these residential spaces thenbecome marketable commodities, as for example Smith (1996) has shown in the case ofNew Yorks Lower East Side. Pockets of space are given new names: enclaves, quar-ters, villages, zones, and the like (Bell and Jayne, 2004), as Business ImprovementDistricts are charged with the manipulation of the symbolic economy of cities (Zukin,1995). Second, through pursuing in-place and identity-making activities in the form ofadvertising, marketing, and promotional campaigns that draw selectively on a citys pastin order to manufacture its present (and future), Business Improvement Districts areinvolved in managing the emotional landscapes of the cities, remaking how citizens andvisitors feel about, and relate to, the downtown. Through their marketing and promotionalstrategies they strive to tap into affective resources. Third, Business Improvement Districts

use notions of creativity and coolness in a myriad of ways to promote their locations.From the encouragement of the creative industries to the marketing of downtowns ascool places, Business Improvement Districts are invoking very particular and partialmeanings of culture, based on the work of Richard Florida (2002) and others that arguefor downtowns to succeed they need to attract the creative classes. Emphasizing softsupply-side features, some Business Improvement Districts have taken center stage inoverseeing the redevelopment of downtowns to create conditions and facilities attractiveto hip, young, middle-class consumers (Peck, 2005). Although in many cases this hasproduced more attractive-looking downtowns, the emphasis on the creativity credo doesrather neglect the role pursuing these sorts of strategies may play in promulgating intra-

urban inequality and working poverty not to mention denying the space for alternativeethnic, racial, and class-inflected cultures to express themselves and be valued.Fourth, through their various street maintenance and security programs, for example,

Business Improvement Districts have shown, according to MacDonald (1996, n.p.) thatthey understand that simple things (e.g., keeping sidewalks clean and safe) matterenormously to the urban quality of life. The revitalization strategies pursued by BusinessImprovement Districts are central to delivering the qualify of life programs that arecurrently so popular among U.S. urban leaders. In the words of the Business ImprovementDistricts themselves, the emphasis is on making downtowns clean, safe, and friendly,places in which to live, work, and play. And by pursuing these sorts of strategies,Business Improvement Districts have become bound up in debates over the securitizationand privatization of public space, an example to point to in wider debates on the emer-gence of a punitive revanchist urbanism (Zukin, 1995; Smith, 1996; Duneier, 2000; Barr,2001; Low, 2006; D. Mitchell and Staeheli, 2006). With its mayor, John Norquist, cham-pioning a particular vision of urban livability through his leading role in the New Urban-ism movement, it is perhaps no surprise that since the 1990s Milwaukees BusinessImprovement Districts have played an important role in the revalorization of the citysdowntown.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN AND THE CITYSBUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS

The recent history of Milwaukee is much like that of many other large cities in the U.S.Midwest (Wilson and Wouters, 2003). From the 1950s onward, the city exhibited the


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now familiar symptoms of industrial decline and restructuring, together with retailsuburbanization, ethnic and socioeconomic transformation, residential suburbanization,and deepening inequalities associated with a shrinking tax base. Manufacturing employ-ment fell by 20% during the early 1980s (Norman, 1989), with service sector employ-ment growth over the same period failing to compensate for the job losses (Pawasarat andQuinn, 1994; Levine, 2002). The wider metropolitan area lost almost one in five of itsmanufacturing jobs, a rate three times that of the U.S. economy as a whole (Norman,1989; Binkley and White, 1991; Kenny, 1995). Although some areas of the city haveexperienced an economic upsurge in recent years, as we shall see, others, particularly tothe north and the northwest of downtown, have not (Levine, 2006a). The restructuring ofthe citys population was profound. Milwaukees population fell by over 16% during the19702000 period, with two northwestern neighborhoods (i.e., Midtown and Waico/

YMCA) experiencing declines of more than 50% (Levine, 2002).During the 1960s, Milwaukee also experienced a significant change in its racial com-

position. The most rapid growth in Milwaukees Black population occurred between1956 and 1960 (from 22,000 to 62,000) and the combined effect of a growing Black pop-ulation and a corresponding decline in the White population through suburbanizationaltered the citys racial composition (Kenny, 1995, p. 452). Thus, by 2005, the citysthree largest racial populations were White non-Hispanic (45.4%), Black (37.3%),and Hispanic (12%). In some neighborhoods, to the north and northwest of downtown,such as Sherman Park, Lincoln Park, and Walnut Hill, the Black population rose fromless than 5% in 1970 to more than 75% in 2000 (Levine, 2003). Over the same period,

Milwaukee became a profoundly unequal city.5

Across a range of indicators inequalitywithin the city and between it and its surrounding suburbs intensified during the 1990s.For example, between 1990 and 2004, the income of residents in inner-city neighbor-hoods, adjusted for inflation, declined by between 2.8% and 8.6% in Milwaukees nearnorthwest side. By 2004, inner-city income per taxpayer was only 41% that of the meanincome in the outlying WOW counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington), andless than half the income level in the suburbs of Milwaukee County (Levine, 2006b). Thisinequality is perhaps not surprisingly racially inflected. One in four of the citys residentslive in poverty compared to 36% of its Black residents. Of the 100 largest U.S. metropol-itan areas, Milwaukee had the lowest rate of Black suburbanization (Levine, 2003). The

consequence of all of this has been to produce one of the most unequal cities in the UnitedStates, where improvements have been limited to a few inner-city neighborhoods (Parker,2005).

In response to this series of social and economic transformations, city government,together with a host of different public and private agencies, have undertaken a series ofprojects across Milwaukee, many of which have targeted the central business district.Boutique retail centers, gentrified warehouses, new condominiums, convention centers,refurbished downtown hotels, revitalized walkways, and parking lots have all been built.Alongside these physical redevelopment projects, since the early 1990s Milwaukeeseconomic and political leaders have led a systematic attempt to remake the citys image

5This article does not address the environmental inequalities produced under this particular form of urban revi-talization (Heynen et al., 2006).


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(Kenny, 1995; Kenny and Zimmerman, 2003). From promotional and marketingcampaigns to the hosting of concerts, festivals, and markets, a range of strategies havebeen pursued around the creation and maintenance of downtown Milwaukee as a com-plex of sites for middle-class conspicuous consumption (Harvey, 1989a, 1989b; Zukin,

1995, 1998). It was in this context of a new urbanist vision for Milwaukee (Kenny andZimmerman, 2003, p. 80) that the first Business Improvement District was established inthe city in the Third Ward in 1988. As Table 1 shows, others followed, the growth in

TABLE 1. Milwaukee Business Improvement Districts

BID Year of formation

Milwaukee #2 Historic Third Ward 1988

Milwaukee #3 Riverfront Plaza N/A

Milwaukee #4 Greater Mitchell Street 1989

Milwaukee #5 Westown 1989

Milwaukee #8 Historic King Drive 1993

Milwaukee #9 735 North Water Street 1993

Milwaukee #10 Avenues West 1993

Milwaukee #11 Brady Street 1993

Milwaukee #13 Oakland Avenue 1994Milwaukee #15 Milwaukee River Walk 1994

Milwaukee #16 West North Avenue 1996

Milwaukee #17 West 76th Street and West Brown Deer Road 1996

Milwaukee #19 Villard Avenue 1997

Milwaukee #20 East North Avenue 1997

Milwaukee #21 Milwaukee Downtown 1997

Milwaukee #22 Edgewood/Oakland 1998

Milwaukee #25 Riverworks 1999

Milwaukee #26 Menomonee Valley 1999

Milwaukee #27 West Burleigh Street 2002Milwaukee #28 North Avenue Gateway 1999

Milwaukee #29 Atkinson/Capital/Teutonia (ACT) 2002

Milwaukee #31 Havenwood 2003

Milwaukee #32 North Avenue Market Place 2004

Milwaukee #35 Kinnickinnic River 2004

Milwaukee #36 Riverworks II 2004

Milwaukee #37 30th Street Industrial Corridor 2006

Milwaukee #38 Cesar E Chavez Drive 2006

Milwaukee #39 Center Street Market Place 2006

Milwaukee #40 Airport Gateway 2006

Source: Law (2007) and Business Improvement District websites.


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numbers being steady rather than explosive, with 2006 seeing four more created to bringthe citys total to 29.

Within the city of Milwaukee there are a variety of different types of BusinessImprovement Districts located in a range of different areas from inner-city neighborhoodsto the suburbs. There is no one dominant model, with the variety of types of places estab-lishing Business Improvement Districts mirrored by the diversity of policies they pursue,the ways in which the revenues are calculated, and the nature of the relationship with citygovernment.6 It is certainly not the case that all of Milwaukees Business ImprovementDistricts have targeted the creative class, although many have in the downtown andadjacent areas.

The highest concentration of Business Improvement Districts is located in and around

the citys downtown, as shown in Figure 1. More than a third of Milwaukees BusinessImprovement Districts were established within three kilometers of the central businessdistrict, reflecting both how the city government envisaged the program contributing tothe citys revitalization and the types of businesses and areas out of which there emergeda commitment to establish a BID. In the majority of cases, it was local businesses thatpetitioned city government to create the Business Improvement District. Each BusinessImprovement District has an overseeing board comprised mainly of property owners.This group meets regularly, every month or two, with annual meetings held to discussand approve budgets and operating plans. The annual operating plan is then submittedto the Department of City Development. The Economic Development Committee of

Milwaukees Common Council then makes a recommendation to the full CommonCouncil, which in turn makes a recommendation to the mayor, who has the final say overwhether the operational plan is approved.

Instrumental in the production of what Florida (2002, p. 7) calls a good people orcreative climateor what Harvey (1989a, p. 47) termed a good living environ-mentthese Business Improvement Districts have set about remaking (literally, when itcomes to the physical redevelopment of central Milwaukees brown field sites) the urbancore. In particular, two aspects of Milwaukees Business Improvement Districts are ofinterest here. The first is their role in the redrawing of the boundaries between the stateand the market in the governance of the city. The formation of Business Improvement

Districts did not just stem from the concerns of local business and property owners. Citygovernment also played its role, both directly supporting their establishment and indi-rectly encouraging them through the actions, comments, and presentations of its seniorfigures:

Mayor John Norquist was very supportive of local control, matching their [thecity governments] effort with our effort. You know he was very sensitive tothe urban animal and what a [city] should be, and that the neighborhoods weregoing to make the city that much more vital. (Interview #10, Milwaukee, July 2005)

6This became apparent at the 2005 Wisconsin Business Improvement District conference which was held inMilwaukee. During discussions it became clear that within the city there was a variety of models for calculat-ing and collecting the levy with the city.


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Fig. 1. The location of Milwaukees Business Improvement Districts.


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Within Milwaukee there was an acknowledgment that Business ImprovementDistricts appeared to be more than a simple publicprivate partnership. They appeared tobe located in-between the public and private sectors:

Theres this gray area. Are we part of the city [government] or not? And weve hadlegal opinions saying, were actually an arm of the city. Whereas, if you talk to us we dont think and operate that way, I mean, you know, were not under anypublic consideration, for instance. Bidding, you know, if we bid a small project,I dont have to do a public bid on it. I can go to a few private contractors I know andlet them bid on it. (Interview #10, Milwaukee, July 2005)

This senior figure in one of Milwaukees longest-established Business Improvement

Districts went on to explain how the services they performed were once delivered by citygovernment:

Well, I think were filling in the gap of what the city cant. The tax burden andthings like that, the city is just stretched to its limit. Because some of the programswere involved with are litter maintenance, which involves some of what the city is,quote, unquote, supposed to be doing, but we do it more, because otherwise, wewould look like hell. (Interview #10, Milwaukee, July 2005)

His views about the ways in which in some cases Business Improvement Districts ateinto the existing financial obligations of city government were echoed by a senior figure

in another Milwaukee BID:

The major concern, why our property owners petitioned the city to create a BIDwas because they felt that they needed to do something to become more competi-tive in the marketplace. Leases were coming up, they wanted to ensure that thoseleases were going to be renewed with, given the current fiscal constraints on localgovernment, both city and county, more and more services were being cut. Youknow, you no longer had a police officer on every street corner. You no longer hadyour downtown street sweeper. The frequency of garbage cans being emptiedwas being decreased because of budget cuts, because of fiscal constraints. (Inter-

view #12, Milwaukee, July 2005)

The second issue explored in this study concerns the policies pursued by BusinessImprovement Districts. Studies of U.S. Business Improvement Districts have docu-mented the types of activities they have promoted across a range of cities (Mitchell,2001a, 2001b; Hoyt, 2005; Clough and Vanderbeck, 2006; Justice and Goldsmith, 2006;Meek and Hubler, 2006; Morl and Zimmerman, 2006; Ward, 2007a). In Milwaukee,whereas each BID claimed to be pursuing a subtly unique strategy, it is possible to iden-tify a number of common themes pursued by Business Improvement Districts across thecity. These fall into three categories: (1)physical infrastructure , such as capital improve-ments (e.g., lighting, street furniture, shrubbery), economic development (e.g., offeringincentives to businesses), and maintenance (e.g., collecting rubbish, removing litter andgraffiti), (2) promotional infrastructure, such as consumer marketing (e.g., organizingand advertising events, producing and distributing maps and newsletters), and (3)policy


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advocacy, such as lobbying government and other stakeholders, networking with otherBusiness Improvement Districts, surveillance infrastructure (e.g., public space regula-tion, controlling traffic flows, discouraging sidewalk selling), and security (e.g., securityguards, CCTV cameras).

Appearing to embody Floridas (2002) emphasis on both the good business and peopleclimate, senior figures in Milwaukees Business Improvement Districts explained whatthey did in the following ways:

Well, again, were selling ourselves as a maintenance organization, a marketingorganization. You know, we have to make sure that were on top of that though, theplace isnt looking crappy, we remove graffiti from buildings as well, which iscommon in this area. Weve got a lot of kids who think theyre cute by putting their

tag on the building. So were cleaning that up all the time. We do a farmersmarket every weekend. We do one major block festival, street block festival, or ablock party festival. Day-to-day, are they looking for me to drive traffic to theirdoor? Well no, not necessarily. But, yeah [its about the] business climate. (Inter-view #10, Milwaukee, July 2005)

I think it was an image of poor, edge of downtown, needing a lot of attention. I mean,and the Association was trying to do some stuff, but they had very little funding So part of what weve tried to do since is [to] create a sense of place and createname identification for the area. (Interview #11, Milwaukee, July 2005)

But in our first year, what we found out is that there were a lot of negative percep-tions about downtown. No place to park, parking is too expensive, I lackinformation about things to do, its dangerous downtown, I dont know enoughabout the arts to come downtown. I dont piggyback it with dinner or going toa bar or going to a festival. I just come downtown, do that one thing, and then Ileave. So what we realized from our our market research was that, you knowwhat, yeah, its wonderful. Weve got these quality-of-life programs in place;everything is clean, safe, and friendly downtown. But you know what? Nobody outthere knows about it. (Interview #12, Milwaukee, July 2005)

In the remainder of this study, I focus on two of the citys Business ImprovementDistricts: BID#21, the Downtown Business Improvement District, and BID#2, the ThirdWard Business Improvement Districtand the roles they have played in the revaloriza-tion of central Milwaukee. The first of these has been particularly concerned on reinforc-ing its place in the wider economic imaginary, as the center of economic activity. It haspursued this goal through a range of representational strategies that seek to manipulatesenses of place. The second, BID#2, has focused on emphasizing its place as a chicneighborhood, overseeing the gentrification of the area through both the refurbishment ofwarehouses and the construction of new condominiums.

DOWNTOWN (BID#21)

If the city is to remake itself as a center of cultural and economic wealth, that goalis specifically to make the downtown the symbolic heart, according to Kenny and


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Zimmerman (2003, p. 81). As a senior figure at one of Milwaukees Business Improve-ment Districts reaffirmed, the creative class wants to be where there is the arts, wherethere is culture, where there is nightlife, where there is dining, where there is outdoor[sic], urban kind of adventures to experience (Interview #12, Milwaukee, July 2005). Ofcourse, who gets to say what is appropriately cool and what is not, and who gets todecide on what is edgy and what is not reveals the uneven power geometries behind thisparticular model of downtown revitalization. The Business Improvement District hasbeen vital in the achievement of this goal, the centering of the downtown as everybodysneighborhood, while at the same time making it clear through its representations andstrategies that it is more the neighborhood of some groups than that of others.

Milwaukees Downtown BID is the largest in Wisconsin, and was established in 1998after a petition was received from local property owners the year before. With its purposeto sustain the competitiveness of downtown and ensure a safe, clean environment con-ducive to business activity (Downtown BID, 2007, p. 1), it covers 120 blocks and justover 400 tax-paying properties, and its 2008 budget is just over $3 million, of which$2.85 million comes from the levy paid by property owners and the rest from voluntarycontributions from tax-exempt properties (e.g., churches, schools, manufacturing plants).Over 65% of this is spent on its two main programs, Public Service Ambassadors andClean Sweep Ambassadors. The rest is spent on advertising, marketing, and recruitingand retaining business activities.

The BID board consists of 19 members.7 Three members represent each of the three

largest (as measured by assessed valuation) multi-tenant office buildings in the District;two members represent the fourth-through the ninth-largest (as measured by assessedvaluation) multi-tenant office buildings in the District; three members represent anymulti-tenant office buildings in the District; three members represent owner-occupied orsingle-tenant buildings in the District with assessed valuations in excess of $5 million, ofwhich one will represent The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and one willrepresent The Shops of Grand Avenue; two members are owners or operators of street-level retail businesses located within the District (whose businesses may include, withoutlimitation, restaurants); two members represent hotels located within the District;8 onemember represents a tax-exempt entity making a voluntary contribution to the District ofnot less than $59,809 in the year 2008, whose minimum contribution shall increase eachyear by the proportionate increase in the District operating budget for that year; and twoare at-large members who do not represent any particular constituency but who areowners and/or occupants of real estate property located within the District used for com-mercial purposes.9 The day-to-day activities of the Business Improvement Districts areoverseen by an Executive Director and an Executive Committee, which consists of achair, a vice-chair, a secretary, a treasurer, and an assistant secretary. Reflecting the size

7Wisconsin statue states that a BID board must consist of a least five members and that the majority be ownersor occupants of properties within the District.8Such hotels shall not be owned or controlled by the same entity or individuals.9In addition, it is also worth noting that one member of the BID Board shall also be a member of the board ofdirectors of Westown Association as long as the latter remains in existence, and one member of the Board shallalso be a member of the board of directors of East Town Association as long as it remains in existence.


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of its financial and physical presence in the BID district, the Board member representingNorthwestern Mutual Life always has a seat on the Executive Committee.

Like many other downtowns around the Midwest, Milwaukees exhibited many famil-iar symptoms, especially abandoned factories, residences, and warehouses. During the1960s and 1970s, the combined effects of global restructuring, combined with a declinein manufacturing employment and the explosion of mall-based retail suburbanization, ledto the creation of a devalorized urban landscape (Levine, 2002). The redoubled move-ment of capital out of the center and into the suburbs created the economic opportunityfor restructuring the central and inner cities [t]he devalorization of capital in the centercreate[d] the opportunity for the revalorization of this underdeveloped section of urbanspace, as Smith (1986, p. 24, original emphasis) put it two decades ago. The recoveryof the 1980s was strong enough to support a rebirth of downtown development

according to Norman (1989, p. 193). The centerpiece was the Grand Avenue Mall, whichopened in 1982. Built in response to the competition posed by the suburban malls, itbegan to struggle after a few years, much like the shops it had been built to replace.Although it may once have been interpreted as the piece of downtown development that changed downtown Milwaukee from a stagnating environment to one that was reju-venating (Norman, 1989, p. 193), the 1990s were even less kind to the Mall. It was notalone: many downtown malls built in Wisconsin during the late 1970s and early 1980sendured similar fates (Ward, 2007b). By the mid-1990s, a decade after its opening, theMall had lost its anchor store:

When The Shops of Grand Avenue opened, and at that time it was called GrandAvenue Mall, you know, retail was up here at the top of the circle. And then, youknow, mid-80s, it started coming down. End of 80s, you know, 90s, we hit rockbottom. And then in mid-90s, our large anchor store, Marshall Fields, left. Andonce they left, a lot of the other nationals that were inside the mall, their leaseagreement was contingent upon the large anchor staying. So they started to just go.(Interview #12, Milwaukee, July 2005)

The impetus behind the creation of the Business Improvement District was explainedas both a critique of existing city government policies and practices, and an understandingthat more could be done collectively by downtown business and property owners. Thereference points were not only past service levels and provision by city government butthe types of goods and services provided at the suburban malls, against which cities werenow competing for a share of what has been termed by Harvey (1989a, 1989b) as thespatial division of consumption.

The invoking of the notion of the downtown as mall (Mallett, 1994; see alsoChristopherson, 1994), an important example of the ways in which the urban landscapehas been divided up in to a patchwork quilt of islands of relative affluence struggling tosecure themselves in a sea of spreading decay (Harvey, 2000, p. 152), was evident inMilwaukees downtown:

To make the analogy to a shopping center You know, thats the way I look atdowntown. Were 120 square blocks we just dont have the sky serves as ourroof. So all of a sudden, your services are being cut, your quality of life issues are


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794 KEVIN WARD

being diminished because of these fiscal constraints, where local government in thepast has stepped in. In addition to that, more and more office parks and suburbandevelopments were doing their own branding, were doing their own marketing.And what was marketing downtown? There was nothing! There was no singleentity that was saying, hey, well be in charge here. You know, well send a mes-sage to the public and create a brand for downtown. So our property owners said,we need to take control of the situation. We need to make our marketplace morecompetitive. (Interview #12, Milwaukee, July 2005)

Much of what this Business Improvement District has been about is acknowledginghow the material and the emotional are intertwined. Accordingly, it has worked with gov-ernment agencies, property owners, real estate developers, and urban designers to

improve its built environment. The BID has emphasized the importance of the emotionaleconomy. Many of its programs have been about how citizens and tourists feel about thedowntown. Manipulating emotionsranging from creating a sense of belonging tohistoric sites to playing on individuals sense of civility and securityare just two of theways in which the Business Improvement District has set about changing how people feelabout downtown Milwaukee, tapping into and drawing out their affective geographies.Through a combination of images, maps, and narratives, which have been recharged withmeanings that blend together aspects of its past, present, and future, the BID has strivedto invoke a sense of a personality for the neighborhood:

So there is a little bit of work that was, well, there was a lot of work that was beingdone in the 80s and 90s to start creating a personality for downtown. And, I think,it helped people to realize, when you look at downtown, its not just this big, hugeblob that they were overwhelmed with. These activities and events, particularly inthese green spaces, created a sense of neighborhood. (Interview #12 Milwaukee,July 2005)

This perception is actively produced and reproduced by members of the BusinessImprovement District staff. Providing additional eyes and ears to the MilwaukeePolice Department (Milwaukee Business District #21, 2006, p. 1), the Public Service

Ambassador Progam puts bodies on the streets, as each employee of these enterpriseshas the maintenance of security as an objective, the other side, so it seems, of deliveringquality service to the customer (Rose, 1999, p. 252):

And that really plays into the safe and friendly, our Public Service Ambassadors.Because you know what, theyre out there, they dont carry weapons, theyre notout there, if you see their uniforms, theyre bright, friendly blue, khaki pants. And,you know, they only thing theyre armed with is brochures. So clean, safe, andfriendly were our initiatives, clean, safe, and friendly. So we looked at cities thathad successful clean, safe, and friendly programs. What does that mean? Thatmeans our Public Service and Master Program. They are our walking concierges.

We have 28 Public Service Ambassadors. Youll see them, blue shirts, clearly iden-tified. Theyre out there, basically serving as walking concierges. (Interview #12,Milwaukee, July 2005)


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Of course this attention to the emotional and symbolic urban economies has gone handin hand with heightened attention to the material registers of assessed values. Referenceto beautification schemes and promotional campaigns have only gone so far in keepingproperty owners convinced of the value added of the Business Improvement District. Attheir annual meetings, what those with an economic stake in the downtown built environ-ment have wanted to see was the value of their investment increasing. And they have notbeen disappointed, because the assessed value for the land and buildings within theDistrict for 2008 stands at just over $2 billion. Precisely how much of this increase is dueto the strategies of the BID is a point of contention, as it is with other U.S. BusinessImprovement Districts (Hoyt, 2005), with other, more systematic factors clearly playinga role as well in the rising value of downtown land in a number of U.S. cities.

THIRD WARD (BID#2)

Billed by the Business Improvement District as Milwaukees Best Kept Secret, therecent history of the Milwaukees Third Ward District is one of significant reinvestmentby capital in high-end housing and associated cultural infrastructure. The BID claims theThe Historic Third Ward boasts the highest concentration of art galleries in the city,numerous restaurants, unique specialty stores, architects, advertising agencies, graphicdesigners, artists (http://www.historicthirdward.org/). Its longer history is one of declineand neglect, in common with many other cities inner-city neighborhoods (Kenny andZimmerman, 2003). By the early 1970s, the Ward was such a devalorized landscape that

a local alderman wanted to turn it into a red light district:

They were trying to clean up Wisconsin Avenue and the rest of downtown. So theysaid, well, why dont we make the [red light] district over in the Third Ward?Because basically, this is, it was all empty warehouses, because they built theexpressway back in 67, and all the Italians had their homes back there. And, youknow, once they built the expressway, the Italians moved out. (Interview #13,Milwaukee, July 2005)

From the perspective of those interest groups eager to further commodify urban landuse, such neighborhoods represented dead zones, in the words of Doron (2000). Theinitial reaction against this proposal was by those who still had an economic stake in theneighborhood.

The Historical Third Ward Association was formed in 1976 and the area named as aHistoric District in 1984. It is located south of the downtown, separated by the elevatedI-794 expressway. The District contains a large concentration of late-19th and early-20thcentury industrial and warehouse buildings, and occupies frontage along the MilwaukeeRiver. That the BID, which was formed in 1988, was one of the earliest established in thecity was due largely to this unique recent institutional history. The rationale for the estab-lishment of the BID was both to allow private property owners [to] work togetherin conjunction with the city and an acknowledgement that public funding sources usedto help promote the District may not be available (Historic Third Ward BID, 2005, p. 8).The District consists of 475 tax parcels, of which only 208 are assessed, the remaining267 being a combination of residential and city/county or state-owned. For 2006, the


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Districts budget was just under a half a million dollars, which is one-sixth of the neigh-boring downtown BIDs budget.10

The BID board has nine members, seven of whom are owners or occupants of propertywithin the District. Reflecting how its commercialresidential mix differs from that of theDowntown BID, the Board contains resident and owner representatives from recentlybuilt residential developments, such as the gentrified apartments and new condominiumsthat dot the District. In its 20 years, the BID has overseen the creation of two TaxIncrement Districts11 within its jurisdiction. In 1991, an Architectural Review Board wasformed to regulate the details of the revitalization; or, as it puts it, the ordinance waspassed to preserve the Third Wards heritage, history, and its superb collection of periodarchitecture, while encouraging innovative mixed-use development (http://www.historicthirdward.org/bidinfo/ARB.php#Ordinance). This ordinance undoubtedly

slowed the transformation of the neighborhood, restricting the influx of national andtransnational retail chains. It also raised the Wards profile, differentiating it fromsurrounding areas and giving it a clear and marketable brandthe type of internaldifferentiation of urban space highlighted by Smith (1986). The Ward was now includedin the National Register of Historic Places.

In many ways, the recent history of the Third Ward District has been a classic case ofgentrification, embodied in its rundown warehouses, widely lauded architecture, and alarge rent gap in Smiths (1979) formulation. Now the artists moved in, as they haddone in other U.S. cities (most notably New York), although as Zukin (1995) details, thestory there was one of mutual reinforcement between urban pioneers and capitalist

reinvestment:

Yeah, we had a lot of artists down here. Milwaukees Institute of Art and Designcame down, and they bought the big Terminal Building here. But it was basically alot of artists. The rents were really cheap. I mean, weve got, you know, six bigbuildings, so they could rent really cheap. The artists are all out of here now theyve all moved down to Walkers Point. I mean, weve become, you know,hip and trendy and across the river is Walkers Point. And now its taken offover there too. There are all these condos, and theyre fixing up the big buildings,and its really unbelievable! (Interview #13, Milwaukee, July 2005)

Over the past decade the Ward has, in the words of local commentators, been trans-formed from funky warehouse and factory district to booming condo and office zone

10The method of calculating the BID assessment is as follows. First, the value of each property subject to BIDassessment is calculated by the City Assessors Office. These values are then added together. Then for eachindividual property the value of its assessment is divided by the total assessment value in the District, giving avaluation factor. This factor is then multiplied by the assessed value of the property to determine the BID 2assessment.11Tax Increment Finance (TIF) is a tool to use future gains in taxes to finance the current improvements thatwill create those gains. When a public project is undertaken there is an increase in the value of surrounding realestate and often new investment. This increased site value and investment creates more taxable property, which

increases tax revenues. The increased tax revenues are the tax increment. Once a TIF is established, public-sector taxing bodies get no new revenue from the TIF. Their share of the property taxes is frozen at the levelit was at just before the TIF was approved. The taxes on all the new property value in the TIF go into the TIFfund and are reinvested in that area (Weber, 2002, 2003).


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dotted with chic shops and stylish restaurants (Gould, 2006, n.p.). As Kenny and Zim-merman (2003, p. 86) put it, the success of the Third Ward is an example of effectivemarketing of authenticity. The chair of the Business Improvement District, EinarTangen, has reflected that:

You had all these great buildings that would clean up nicely. People who werealready starting to develop lofts in them could see the urban lifestyle as a goodcounterpoint to sprawl. You had water everywhere, easy access to the downtown.It was a slam-dunk. (Quote in Gould, 2006, n.p.)

Anointed as cool by Richard Florida when he visited the city of Milwaukee in 2001(Gertzen, 2001, n.p.), in recent years the Wards Business Improvement District has

worked with city agencies and private developers to revitalize large swathes of its builtenvironment, including shops and warehouses, as well as the spaces between buildings,such as the walkways along the lake and the river, making greater use of its waterfront.

In order to maintain its reputation as a cool place to live, work, and play, thisBusiness Improvement District took a clear stance on the presence of multinational retail-ers within its area:

We dont want big chains. And the only chain thats down here right now isStarbucks, and its the only one that we have. We want everything special. (Inter-view #13, Milwaukee, July 2005)

As part of the Wards revitalization, and to increase the amount of retailing within theDistrict while adhering to its chic reputation, the Milwaukee Public Market was openedat the end of 2005. This development reflected the growing importance attached by urbanpractitioners to the production of downtown landscapes of conspicuous consumption.The creation and authentication of new spaces of consumption, particularly in gentrifyingneighborhoods, is justified and legitimized in terms of their places in the wider revitaliza-tion project. For Goss (1996, pp. 235 and 240), thanks to its restored physical location,architecture, interior design, and retail concepts, these sorts of developments contrive torecover a nostalgic sense of history and of a lost civic urban ideal. Through deploying this

mythical spirit of the marketplace, developers:reshap[e] the inner city as a stage and. The festival marketplace [becomes] aphantasmagoria of capitalist production that marks the threshold to a dream worldof utopian images and imaginings of a mythical natural urbanism.

The Market has an ambivalent relationship with its many pasts. On the one hand, thelabor of the citys working classes is aestheticized and preserved in material culturethrough the use of images of the working waterfront. The Markets website connectsthe Commission Row of the 1880s with the Market of today. As it puts it, The modern-day Milwaukee Public Market preserves the nature of this historical neighborhoodand capitalizes on the history of an area that native Wisconsinites associate with freshfood (http://www.milwaukeepublicmarket.org/ourstory.shtml, last accessed March 29,2007). On the other hand, evidence from other similar developments suggest that the


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contemporary working and marginal classes will be conspicuously absent from this spec-tacle of consumption. As the website goes on to explain, the Market is part of a new urbanvanguard, as public Markets are revitalized and new Markets are developed incities across the United States (http://www.milwaukeepublicmarket.org/ourstory.shtml,last accessed March 29, 2007). With its emphasis on gourmet, organic, and specialtyfoods, the Market clearly differs from its predecessors, as an interviewee confirmed:

This is a different market. Its going to have wine and cheese, and, you know, fish.Its more like Pikes Place in Seattle. Its going to be a year-round market. Itsindoors. And the outdoor market is just from June until November. Thats whereyou just can buy the vegetables and fruit. But the indoor market will have every-thing. (Interview #13, Milwaukee, July 2005)

Most recently a competition was held for the right to design the Erie Street Plaza in theThird Ward. Financed through a Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) district, this Plaza willlink the Milwaukee Riverwalk with the Lakefront Walk. As Mayor Tom Barrett put it inJune 2006 when he announced the winning design:

The new energy and excitement about Milwaukee has captured the attention of theinternational design community, as the tremendous response to this competitionshows, said Mayor Tom Barrett. I am grateful to all of the firms that competedfor the chance to create a unique Milwaukee landmark. Erie Street Plazas sustain-able garden will add to Milwaukees cool factor as it offers significant publicaccess to our Riverwalk and Lakefront trail. (http://www.mkedcd.org/planning/EriePlaza/index.html, last accessed March 29, 2007)

This latest development builds on the areas revitalization projects of the past twodecades. Figure 2 maps out condominium developments in the two BID areas since 2005,during which more than $1 billion in investment has flowed into the wider GreaterDowntown area. A number of issues are worth noting. First, the geographic distributionof the twelve developments reveals how the Historic Third Ward has emerged as thecenter of residential development in downtown Milwaukee. Eight of the 12 projects havetaken place within its District, reflecting how the current wave of capital revitalizationfavors investment in late-19th and early-20th century warehouses. Many of the buildingsbeing developed as condominiums were built between 1910 and 1920. Second, there is adegree of variety in the type of developments in terms of the way in which the buildingsare being used. In some the emphasis is all on residential use, while in other develop-ments, such as The Residences on Water Condominiums, there is a mix of commercial,residential, and retail. There is also a reasonable variety in terms of the number of unitsbeing built and their sizes. For example, 320 Condos only consist of 11 units, while RiverRenaissance consists of 80. In terms of the size of the individual units, the smallest arearound 800 square feet and cost in the vicinity of $242,000, while the largest penthouse

suites are 2,700+ square feet and cost between $1 million and $3 million. This comparesto the average house price across Milwaukee, which is $119,000; in the poorest neighbor-hoods, however, prices average $70,000.


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CONCLUSION

When a senior figure, reflecting on his role at one of Milwaukees Business Improve-ment Districts, commented this is like running a small city, this was more than bravado.They are part of an assemblage of architects, civil engineers, economic consultants, gov-ernment agencies, retail developers, publicprivate partnerships, and urban designers

Fig. 2. Condominium developments in the Downtown and the Third Ward Business ImprovementDistricts, 2005.


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who have brought their expertise and knowledge to bear on a range of sites and spacesaround Milwaukee. The consequences for the city, its citizens, and its visitors have beenfar-reaching. A walk around central Milwaukee reveals how the re-envisioning of the citythrough the prism of new urbanismwith the emphasis on increased housing density,aesthetics, beauty in design, walkability, and the likehas transformed the urban land-scape. And there can be no doubt that on its own terms, the redevelopment of the down-town has been a huge success. Boutiques, cafes, cinemas, condominiums, conventioncenters, museums, parks, and theaters punctuate the urban landscape of the citys down-town and bordering neighborhoods. This constitutes a massive movement back to the cityby people and capital: the population of the downtown area has risen by 20% in recentyears, albeit from a low base, while more than $2 billion was invested in residentialrenovations and new buildings.12 Whereas the deepening inequalities that characterize the

city of Milwaukee cannot all be traced back to the citys downtown Business Improve-ment Districts, nonetheless their roles in the governing of cities within cities (NewYork City Council Staff Report, 1995) should not be underestimated.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize four points. First, even though this paper has beenabout two particular areas in central Milwaukee, it has sought to emphasize the ways inwhich these sites are connected to places elsewhere. That is, it has highlighted both theterritorial and relational geographies at work in producing both the Downtown and theThird Ward Districts. Nowhere is this territorial and relational constitution of these twospaces clearer than in how the experiences of spatially distant but socially proximateplaces have been folded into local policy and practice. When the downtown BID was

first established and beginning to envision its future strategies, where did it look? Notsurprisingly, it looked to the Manhattans, the Philadelphias, the Seattles of the world [that] were really remaking themselves (Interview #12, Milwaukee, July 2005).Although it might have had more in common with other Midwestern cities (Wilson andWouters, 2003), the casting of these places within cities as models, for others to repli-cate is reflected in the general imaginary and narrative that has accompanied the revital-ization strategies pursued by both Business Improvement Districts. It is also embodied inparticular projects, the most obvious being the Milwaukee Public Market.

Second, in the case of the Downtown and the Third Ward Districts, the activities of theBusiness Improvement Districts have contributed to the creation of what Mitchell and

Staeheli (2006, p. 153) refer to as pseudo-private spacesspaces that are formallyowned by the state, by the public, but that are subject to control and regulation by privateinterests. Under these conditions, where accumulationthe increase in exchangevaluesis the leading rationale for improving public spaces in the downtown, the verynature of the downtown is itself transformed. It moves from being a place in whichpeople can learn to live with strangers, to enter into the experiences and interests ofunfamiliar lives (Sennett, 2001, n.p.), to increasingly resembling selectively exclusion-ary spaces, where the emphasis is on celebrating a highly commodified version ofdifference (or unfamiliarity) as architects, planners, and policymakers produceinterdictory and securitized urban landscapes. As part of this remaking of the citys

12There are now 125 condominium associations in downtown Milwaukee covering about 5,500 residentialunits.


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downtown property regime it is the poorest who have been most affected, not least thehomeless, of which there are currently 2,000 individuals on any given night, about 500800 of whom are chronically homeless (The Open Gate, 2004; Soika and Schultz,2005).13 With condominiums being built all around the area and starting prices athundreds of thousands of dollars, the inequalities could not be starker.

Third, Business Improvement Districts are about more that just a new way of govern-ing spaces within cities. As this study and others have argued, they appear to constitutean example of the neoliberalization of the city. That is, they seem to speak to the generalqualitative restructuring of the state as it revises and reassesses the functions it performsin the area of urban redevelopment. It is possible to understand the various ambassadorial,marketing, promotional, and security strategies of Milwaukees Business ImprovementDistricts in light of Harveys (2004, p. 10) claim that the fundamental mission of the

neoliberal state is to create a good business climate and therefore to optimize condi-tions for capital accumulation. Of course, there is nothing particularly new about this.For more than two centuries, U.S. localities have been competing against each other forinvestment through the production of good business climates (Sbragia, 1996). Whatperhaps sets the current era apart is the role of the state in encouraging and valuing theseactivities, the ways in which places are connected into wider capital flows through theemergence of transnational real estate corporations and investors, and the institutionalgeographies of programs like Business Improvement Districts.

Business Improvement Districts constitute a licensed and parameterized handing overto business elites of parcels of the city. They are both a contributing factor to, and a con-

sequence of, the ways in which creative class, new urbanism, and quality-of-life policieshave been received across many U.S. cities. Business Improvement Districts are agents inthe delivery of cool cities. As Peck (2007, n.p.) puts it: whereas the entrepreneurialcities chased jobs, the creative cities pursue talent workers; the entrepreneurial citiescraved investment, now the creative cities yearn for buzz; while entrepreneurial citiesboasted of their postfordist flexibility, the creative cities trade on the cultural distinctionofcool. Both the Downtown and the Third Ward District BID have been about makingdowntown Milwaukee cool and hip, a place in which to be seen, while around them manyin the central city continue to struggle. As Levine (2006a, p. 6) notes:

inner city economic improvements have been limited to a few neighborhoods,chiefly those ringing downtown, where substantial gentrification has occurred.Other neighborhoods in the inner city continue to experience falling incomes and ashrinking employment base Decline on the Northwest Side suggests thatMilwaukee is experiencing a territorial rearrangement of economic distress, withsome inner city neighborhoods showing gains, others still declining, and still otherneighborhoods on the Northwest Side falling into deep economic difficulty.

13My argument is that of course Business Improvement Districts alone are not responsible for the deep inequal-ities that pervade Milwaukee or the economic and social processes that have transformed the citys downtown

over the past decade. They are not, although they and their advocates might claim they were. Rather, this studyhas contended that Business Improvement Districts are important institutional actors in the regimes that governU.S. urban downtowns, and whose strategies have far-reaching consequences for the terms under which therelationship among redevelopment, property, and public space is constituted (Staeheli and Mitchell, 2007).


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Two sides of the same transformation perhaps, because whether it is the creativecities of Florida (2002) or the cool communities of Ryan (2007), the prescription is forurban leaders to contemplate new forms of fiscally modest, supply-side investment,mostly targeted at economically secure residents of neighborhoods in which propertyprices are already on the up (Peck, 2007, n.p.). Cool for some, for sure, but not for most.

Fourth, and finally, although it has not been a central feature of this article, it isimportant to keep sight of the underlying logic behind the establishment of BusinessImprovement Districts, which is the enhancement of exchange values. The act of estab-lishing a Business Improvement District constitutes an example of the internal differen-tiation of geographic space at the urban scale (Smith, 1986, p. 18; see also Smith, 1982).This is the contemporary means through which economic expansion occurs. Once estab-lished, a Business Improvement Districts overarching objective is to increase assessment

values. Subject to annual performance reviews, and to periodicnormally between 5 and10 yearsvotes on their continued existence, Business Improvement Districts mustdeliver results. As we have seen, there are a range of strategies pursued by BusinessImprovement Districts, but the process of beautification is not an end in itself. In the caseof the Downtown and the Third Ward Business Improvement Districts, recent years havewitnessed strong growth in assessed values. In the Downtown BID they have almostdoubled. The growth for the Third Ward Districts is even more staggering (Kenny andZimmerman, 2003), with the assessed value increasing sixfold during the 19952005period, from $40 to $240 million, although of course this rise is not entirely due to theBID. Whereas accounts commonly emphasize how the Ward has become populated by

chic and creative professionals, an equally important aspect of this story of re-differ-entiation of urban space is the role played by banks, real estate companies, the state, andother agencies such as Business Improvement Districts in making the current social andeconomic transformation under way in central Milwaukee possible, and perhaps, proba-ble. There remains it appears, in the words of Harvey (1989a, p. 157), much capital to beaccumulated through the production of preconditions.

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