Neighborhood Commercial Corridors as Common Pool Resources

• In Event: Corporatism and Its Effect on Cities

Abstract

Ostrom's design principles for common pool resources (CPRs) are most often applied to such things as grazing lands, natural fisheries, or aquifers. In this paper I attempt to extend Ostrom's model of CPR governance to traditional urban neighborhood commercial corridors (NCCs), in which various stakeholders -- most notably property owners and merchants -- must cooperate to protect the various collective goods which define the NCC as a CPR, such as cleanliness, retail mix, and an overall corridor identity. I look in particular at the case of Philadelphia's approximately 265 NCCs and the relationships between informal cooperation and the construction of more formal NCC governing structures such as business associations, community development corporations, and business improvement districts -- and how these more formalized structures are nested within larger city civic institutions and government agencies. My paper seeks to extend both the theoretical model of CPP governance and the more recent discussion of the "urban commons."

Author

• Richardson Dilworth, Drexel University