Business Improvement Districts and the Contradictions of Placemaking: Bid Urbanism in Washington, D.C. by Susanna F Schaller

Author:Susanna F Schaller [Schaller, Susanna F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, Urban & Regional, Social Science, Political Science, Urban, Business & Economics, Sociology
ISBN: 9780820361680
Google: P_1rzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 58083801
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2021-10-26T06:52:27+00:00

Regulating Livelihood and Belonging

In 2000, several discussions raged on the neighborhood Internet forum around both alcohol consumption and the regulation of alcohol sales on Mount Pleasant Street. The Mount Pleasant Neighbors Alliance MPNA, founded in 1992, a year after the riots, with the mission to improve the neighborhood’s “quality of life,” was now actively trying to curtail alcohol sales and entertainment sponsored by local businesses. Its members, some of whom had been ANC commissioners, understood D.C.’s political geography and utilized political as well as bureaucratic channels to accomplish their goals. As part of these efforts and with the support of the local ANC, MPNA pressured largely immigrant-owned businesses to sign “voluntary” agreements to accept specific terms of operation and to supervise certain activities in front of their premises.8 These activities echoed an earlier “cleanup campaign” in 1990. Only a few months before the “riots,” a Washington Post reporter had observed, “the main street has become a repository for the neighborhood’s conflicting agendas and a symbol of its gnawing tensions” (Farhi 1990).

The renewed efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s followed a similar pattern and paradigm, but they also ignited controversy on the local Internet forum. The ANC and MPNA were “protesting” every liquor license renewal, ostensibly to hold businesses accountable for their sales practices. According to the MPNA and ANC representatives, “the only way that a non-seller [could] participate in an ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control Board] proceeding [was] as a complainant, a petitioner, and a protestant … one way to resolve the protest [was] through modification of the seller’s behavior as recorded in a Voluntary Agreement, which [would] become part of the license term.” Other residents, however, who found out that a particularly beloved corner market had been targeted, criticized this practice and pointed out that the “protest” had forced the market’s owners to incur unwarranted costs. After much questioning about the blanket use of the voluntary agreement, an ANC commissioner acknowledged that the form letter might indeed have been “a blunt instrument.” The voluntary agreement, it seems, was the brainchild of a relatively small group of people. Nevertheless, the episode illuminates the ways in which residents, perhaps ignorant of or unconcerned about the costs to small business owners, were operating from their class privilege to gain control over and reshape the character of “their” neighborhood’s main street.

During this Internet-based discussion, one person directly highlighted the fact that most of the businesses on the corridor were immigrant owned and perhaps catered to and attracted a clientele that did not reflect the desires of some of the property owners on the west side of the commercial corridor:

I am a first time contributor to the Mount Pleasant Forum. I live and work in Mount Pleasant and have been a resident of either MP or Adams Morgan for the last twenty-five years. I congratulate the Forum and have some quick comments, both the pro and con, about the latest edition. As a resident of Hispanic origin, I am appalled at the behavior

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.