Private Investment in the Public’s Interest? The Case of Business Improvement Districts and Crime in New York City

• In Event: Measuring the Crime-Effects of Place-Based Interventions

Abstract

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are an increasingly popular example of a public-private initiative employed to revitalize urban commercial corridors and maintain a reasonable level of neighborhood services. There is reason to believe that BIDs will decrease crime due to their supplemental safety measures and increased street-level vigilance. What exactly are the mechanisms through which BIDs influence crime—via professional crime control services (like cameras or patrols) or as a platform to communicate with local precinct and city officials? We examine these questions in studying the effect of BIDs on crime in New York City, the municipality with the highest number of BIDs in the nation. We have access to rich microdata on BID characteristics (specifically their formation dates, boundaries, budgets and services), crime reports, nuisance complaints, and neighborhood demographics that we can exploit to more precisely identify the relationship between the BIDs’ activities and investments and crime outcomes. Furthermore, the fact that we can compare point-level crime data inside the BID boundary to that immediately outside the BID boundary (but in the same broader neighborhood context) allows us to more convincingly identify the causal effect of BIDs on crime.

Authors

• Rachel Meltzer, New School

• Seunghoon Han, University of Pennsylvania

• Philip J. Cook, Duke University

• Ingrid Ellen, New York University

• John MacDonald, University of Pennsylvania