SidaSubSaharaV1, Istex, Corpus, bibRecord, 001939

Managing Politics and Consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The Geographies of Political Activism on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace

Identifieur interne : 001939 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001938; suivant : 001940

Managing Politics and Consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The Geographies of Political Activism on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace

Auteurs : Nathan L. Clough ; Robert M. Vanderbeck

Source :

Urban studies (Harlow. Print) [ 0042-0980 ] ; 2006-11.

RBID : ISTEX:4D7D67AFF5297F0E4D8D9BE779BB60FDEF38EE5D

English descriptors

Abstract

Business improvement districts (BIDs), which are formed when spaces that are legally public are put under private or semi-private forms of administration, have become increasingly prominent features of many cities internationally. This paper provides an in-depth, empirically grounded analysis of the practices of political activism and issue advocacy in one widely admired BID (Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, Vermont) in light of recent theoretical concerns about the decline of 'public' space within the current neo-liberal context of privatisation. The paper examines the ways in which various kinds of political activity are constructed by Marketplace management as either assets or liabilities, and how different forms of activism are differentially regulated and policed in pursuit of maintaining the carefully themed environment of the BID. The research raises important questions about the extent to which downtown (and other) spaces that have been (re)organised as BIDs can fulfil the role of public space in democratic societies.

Url:

https://api.istex.fr/document/4D7D67AFF5297F0E4D8D9BE779BB60FDEF38EE5D/fulltext/pdf

DOI: 10.1080/00420980600936517

Links to Exploration step

ISTEX:4D7D67AFF5297F0E4D8D9BE779BB60FDEF38EE5D

Le document en format XML

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<abstract xml:lang="en"><p>Business improvement districts (BIDs), which are formed when spaces that are legally public are put under private or semi-private forms of administration, have become increasingly prominent features of many cities internationally. This paper provides an in-depth, empirically grounded analysis of the practices of political activism and issue advocacy in one widely admired BID (Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, Vermont) in light of recent theoretical concerns about the decline of 'public' space within the current neo-liberal context of privatisation. The paper examines the ways in which various kinds of political activity are constructed by Marketplace management as either assets or liabilities, and how different forms of activism are differentially regulated and policed in pursuit of maintaining the carefully themed environment of the BID. The research raises important questions about the extent to which downtown (and other) spaces that have been (re)organised as BIDs can fulfil the role of public space in democratic societies.</p>
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<title-group><article-title>Managing Politics and Consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The Geographies of Political Activism on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace</article-title>
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         <contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Clough</surname>
<given-names>Nathan L.</given-names>
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<aff>Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, 414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA, <email xlink:type="simple">clou0062@umn.edu</email>
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         <contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Vanderbeck</surname>
<given-names>Robert M.</given-names>
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<aff>School of Geography, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK, <email xlink:type="simple">r.vanderbeck@leeds.ac.uk</email>
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<abstract><p>Business improvement districts (BIDs), which are formed when spaces that are legally public are put under private or semi-private forms of administration, have become increasingly prominent features of many cities internationally. This paper provides an in-depth, empirically grounded analysis of the practices of political activism and issue advocacy in one widely admired BID (Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, Vermont) in light of recent theoretical concerns about the decline of 'public' space within the current neo-liberal context of privatisation. The paper examines the ways in which various kinds of political activity are constructed by Marketplace management as either assets or liabilities, and how different forms of activism are differentially regulated and policed in pursuit of maintaining the carefully themed environment of the BID. The research raises important questions about the extent to which downtown (and other) spaces that have been (re)organised as BIDs can fulfil the role of public space in democratic societies.</p>
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<meta-value>2261 Managing Politics and Consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The Geographies of Political Activism on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace SAGE Publications, Inc.11/2006DOI: 10.1080/00420980600936517 Nathan L.Clough Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, 414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA, clou0062@umn.edu Robert M.Vanderbeck School of Geography, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK, r.vanderbeck@leeds.ac.uk (Paper fir.rt received, August 2005; in final form, January 2006] Business improvement districts (BIDs), which are formed when spaces that are legally public are put under private or semi-private forms of administration, have become increasingly prominent features of many cities internationally. This paper provides an in-depth, empirically grounded analysis of the practices of political activism and issue advocacy in one widely admired BID (Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, Vermont) in light of recent theoretical concerns about the decline of 'public' space within the current neo-liberal context of privatisation. The paper examines the ways in which various kinds of political activity are constructed by Marketplace management as either assets or liabilities, and how different forms of activism are differentially regulated and policed in pursuit of maintaining the carefully themed environment of the BID. The research raises important questions about the extent to which downtown (and other) spaces that have been (re)organised as BIDs can fulfil the role of public space in democratic societies. Introduction To take a stroll down the pedestrian mall in Burlington ... you start at Leunig's, the indoor/outdoor bistro where some of the local businessmen gather for breakfast each morning ... As you stroll down the street, you see young parents pushing those all-terrain baby carriages that are popular with the outdoors set. The high- end fashion chain Ann Taylor has its Burlington outlet cheek by jowl with the Peace and Justice Store ... The pedestrian mall is lined with upscale candy, muffin, and ice cream stores ... There are kite festivals and yoga festivals and eating festivals. There are arts councils, school- to-work collaboratives, environmental groups, preservation groups, community- supported agriculture, antidevelopment groups, and ad hoc activist groups.... People ... apparently would rather spend less time in the private sphere of their home and their one-acre yard and more time in the common areas (Brooks, 2000, pp. 105-106). In his recent bestseller Bobos in Paradise,l 1 David Brooks (2000) describes the active street life that can be found on Burlington, Vermont's pedestrianised Church Street Marketplace. In an era when concerns have 2262 repeatedly been voiced about the decline of urban public spaces (Lees, 1994; Banerjee, 2001), the Marketplace has been praised as an example of a vibrant small-city downtown area that provides "what pedestrians want", including a high density of consumption choices and opportunities to see and be seen by other people, all in a relatively safe environment (Campoli et al., 2001, p. 4). This environment that makes people want to spend "more time in the common areas", however, is not one that has emerged simply by chance, but rather results (at least in part) from the management of the Marketplace as a business improvement district (BID). BIDs are an increasingly important form of urban space formed when (often relatively prominent) locations that are legally public are put under private or semi-private administration. Once a relatively unremarkable small-city downtown street, the Church Street Marketplace BID was opened in 1981 when a substantial portion of Church Street, located in the heart of Burlington's downtown area, was pedestrianised and placed under the management of the Church Street Marketplace District Commission. The Commission, which consists of a mix of local business owners and other stakeholders, is a quasi-governmental body whose membership is appointed by the Burlington City Council. Like other BIDS, the Marketplace's primary goal is to manage its space in ways that attract larger numbers of consumers and increase the profitability of the space (Briffault, 1999). The rapid spread of these popular forms of public/private management over the past several decades raises a number of questions for theorists of urban public space. In particular, in this paper we are concerned with the extent to which downtown (and other) urban spaces which have been (re)organised as BIDs are fulfilling the necessary functions of public space in democratic societies. Mitchell (1995, 2003), for example, emphasises that healthy democratic societies require public spaces which serve as 'spaces for represen- tation'-i.e. spaces where alternative and dissenting viewpoints can be freely expressed and debated. Ruddick (1996) similarly reminds us of the necessity of spaces for people to encounter, by choice or chance, other people from diverse social groups and of diverse opinions with whom they would not otherwise have other opportunities to interact or even see (see also Cooper, 1998). Within the academy, however, a number of commentators have expressed grave concerns about the fate of public spaces within the neo-liberal context of privatisation. Banerjee argues that There is a general agreement that we are experiencing a steady withering of the public realm, a trend recently exacerbated by a world-wide campaign for market liberalism and downsizing governments (Banerjee, 2001, p. 9). Others, such as Purcell (2002), Goss (1996) and Zukin (1995), discuss the increasingly instrumental stance taken by cities towards public spaces, viewing them as avenues to increased accumulation rather than as having use value in their own right. Can downtown (and other) locations that have been put under neo-liberal forms of governance in the form of BIDS, and which therefore have a clear imperative to increase levels of consumption and profit, also serve the democratic functions of urban public space? One striking feature of Brooks' account of the Church Street Marketplace (quoted earlier) is how consumption activities seemingly intermingle with various kinds of political campaigning and issue advocacy, as pedestrians encounter not only shopping choices but also a range of ideas and opinions that may or may not be consistent with their own. Although indoor shopping malls have been widely critiqued for providing sanitised spaces that suppress the expression of political (as well as other forms of) difference (for example, Goss, 1996), the outdoor 'pedestrian mall' that is the Marketplace apparently makes space for at least some forms of campaigning and advocacy. Consider, however, the perspective of 'Joseph', an anti-war activist in Burlington who-in contrast to Brooks' portrayal of a vibrant political life on the Marketplace has in fact clashed several times with the Marketplace Commission over 2263 its regulatory policies and feels that he and others are quite restricted in their ability to advocate their causes I think that [the Marketplace Commission] have an interest in keeping Church Street with as little political discourse as possible. Apparently they have a fear that people giving you all kinds of things and talking to you, and presenting peace tables and what-have-you, is going to scare away people ... It shouldn't be that '[Church Street] is a shopping mall and if there is any (extra) space we will give it to the political people', it should be the other way around. The entire country should be a free zone for political expression ... and if there is any space left over ... that should be for selling, for shoppers, for commerce, but only if it doesn't interfere with the first amendment (Joseph, personal interview, 2004). Joseph's remarks gesture towards the tension that exists between the democratic ideal of public space as a site for public participation in politics and the neo-liberal ideal (as embodied by BIDs) of public space as a site for increased profitability through privatised management. This tension, as we will discuss, has rarely been addressed in the literature on BIDs in an empirically grounded way. In this paper, we seek to extend recent critical literatures on urban public space through a grounded, in-depth analysis of the contested practice of political activism in one widely admired BID, the Church Street Marketplace. We give particular attention to the ways in which political activity is both restricted and, in certain respects, encouraged as part of the BID's goal of generating increasing profits for local businesses (which themselves are closely involved in the management of this hybrid public/private space). Our research demonstrates how certain kinds of overt political activity2 fit comfortably with the managerial goal of producing a form of 'congenial urbanism' on the Marketplace that is conducive to consumption, while other activities which are viewed as conflicting with this goal are policed (and, in some cases, explicitly banned) through subtle and less subtle means. The remainder of the paper will proceed as follows. We begin with a closer examination of the complex theoretical issues raised by public/private managed consumption spaces such as BIDs for theorists interested in urban public space and 'the right to the city' (Lefebvre, 1996). We then turn to a more detailed discussion of the research context and our methodological approach, which included document analysis, participant observation and a series of in-depth interviews with relevant actors. Next, we explore the ways in which the Church Street Marketplace is 'themed', how certain kinds of political uses are in fact encouraged in the maintenance of this theme and how particular discourses are mobilised by the Marketplace Commission to justify limiting political activity which is viewed as transgressive of the carefully managed theme of the street. Also crucial to the analysis are the ways in which the Marketplace Commission discursively constructs 'the public' itself. We then focus in depth on two different moments of political activity on the Marketplace, one which was explicitly banned while the other was actively facilitated. These two moments, we argue, shed light on the managed and staged interweaving of politics and commerce that occurs in the BID. In the final section, we offer concluding reflections on the uneasy relation between politics and commerce in BIDs, while also signalling the need for further empirical exploration of these issues in other US and international contexts. Urban Public Space and Business Improvement Districts The Politics of Public Space and Consumption Space Urban theorists from a range of disciplinary backgrounds have emphasised the importance of public spaces (spaces which are open and accessible to all members of the public, not just those defined as a 'desirable' public) for the functioning of democracy. It is often 2264 assumed that people in democratic societies live in a free marketplace of ideas wherein the 'best' ideas will prevail through widespread public debate and argumentation (see Habermas, 1991; Held, 1980; Goheen, 1998; Mitchell, 2003, 2004). Ideas, however, come from people, and people hold social positions that greatly affect who is likely to hear their ideas, where these ideas can be heard and what influence their ideas will have. Those in positions of relative power often use their influence to affect what speech is heard, and what is silenced, in spaces that they control. This is one of the reasons why urban theorists have vigorously defended the significance of public space, because without it those in less powerful positions lack physical space where (at no monetary cost) they have the right to speak, and where they have face-to-face access to others who can choose to listen to them or not, without being unduly censored by powerful interests.3 3 The 'taking of space' by activists has long been used as a strategy for keeping powerful interests accountable to the people. Mitchell (2003), for example, examines how students, labour agitators and the homeless all have a long history of resisting governmental, institutional or corporate policy by occupying public spaces. Lefebvre (1996), whose notion of 'the right to the city' has influenced much critical work on urban public space, seems to suggest that appropriation by the people is what makes a given space truly public. Further, Purcell (2002) argues that Lefebvre's notion of the 'right to the city' can serve as a radical counterpoint to the supposed right of the capital class to utilise public spaces in the pursuit of private profit. Thus, in this view, a focus on the right of the people to use space calls into question some of the assumptions of neo-liberal capitalism and its ideology of privatisation. One major concern for theorists of public space has been the proliferation of spaces of hegemonic consumerism which have become the focus for much American life. In many American cities, privately owned shopping malls and other private consumption/leisure spaces have overtaken 'traditional' downtown spaces as the gathering-places of the population (Sorkin, 1992; Goss, 1993, 1999; Francoviglia, 1996; Gottdiener, 1997; Vanderbeck and Johnson, 2000). These spaces have been widely critiqued for dividing the general population along lines of class and 'lifestyle', as well as age, race, ethnicity, gender and a range of other differences (Ruddick, 1996; Goss, 1999). While public space remains a visible aspect of many cities, a number of researchers (Cohen, 2003; Davis, 1992; Moe and Wilkie, 1997; Smith, 1992; Sorkin, 1992) suggest that the proliferation of sprawling strip development and the decline of downtowns have left little opportunity for the utilisation of older, centrally located public spaces by the citizens of the city. The dominant narrative of much of the literature on public space has been one of decline (although one must guard against unnecessarily idealising or romanticising the state of urban public space in the past). These transformations of space are linked to larger concerns about consumption's role in defining who is entitled to be considered part of the (desirable) 'public' and how urban space can be appropriately occupied. Sennett (1976), for example, warns that late capitalism has created a cult of individualism that has killed the collective spirit that used to exist in urban public spaces, while Baudrillard (1981, 1994) has famously argued that consumption has become the new labour of the working classes, thus obscuring production as a source of solidarity. One implication of this growing emphasis on consumption has been a privileging of commercial/consumptive relationships and spaces over other types of relationships and spaces, often to the exclusion of competing uses and meanings. Even as 'traditional' downtown spaces have declined, however, modern consumer spaces have been critiqued for the problematic ways in which they attempt to appeal to nostalgic notions of the 'authentic' city in an attempt to sell goods and to put people in the mood to buy (Goss, 1996; Jackson et al., 2000). Francoviglia (1996) traces the history of the idea of the traditional 'Main Street' and how 2265 it has been reproduced as a social space in the form of Main Street USA at Disneyland, thereby privileging streamlined views of history and social organisation. Goss (1996) provides a semiotic analysis of the Aloha Tower Marketplace in Honolulu and Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, concluding that these "widely emulated festival marketplaces are conceived to exploit collective nostalgia for these urban forms in order to realise the purpose of mass consumption" (Goss, 1996, p. 223). The emphasis on consumption as the primary legitimate means of being-in-public has concrete, often exclusionary consequences. Van Deusen (2002) demonstrates how the urban design strategies of the city of Syracuse, New York, have served to produce the class-based exclusion of 'undesirables' (those without significant capital with which to consume) from revitalised public spaces in the city. Zukin (1995, p.19) observes that capital interests seek control over public spaces in order to ensure the profitability of their investments and to recast public civility in the form of consumption. She documents the shift from the conceptualisation of public space as a public good, to an instrumental vision of public space as a cultural tool/ asset for the revitalisation of the city, a revitalisation that primarily manifests itself as the creation of increased accumulation opportunities for the rich. In her view, public space has been commoditised and co-opted into the reproduction of consumer society. Private interests are increasingly taking over many of the functions traditionally assigned to the public sector, such as managing 'public' parks, streets and other places that had previously been held in the public trust (Lees, 1994; Banerjee, 2001). Lees summarises the problems of substituting private commercial spaces for public places as follows If a significant section of the public cannot get to or use malls because cheap public transportation is lacking or because they are denied entry, then malls reinforce communal divisions rather than overcome them. Moreover, they offer a super-sanitized, a-historical environment that denies all contact with a specific city and its past ... Although malls have public space to offer, it is generic, a commercially bottled variety that generally closes by 9:00 p.m. and locks its doors against trespassers. Because malls are privately owned, access remains tenuous, a function of the competitive marketplace rather than citizens' rights. Then too activities within them are monitored, as senior citizens have sometimes found to their distress when turning mall corridors into exercise tracks. The meaning of free speech within them is currently being contested in U.S. courts ... Malls are at best semipublic spaces, open to criticism on a variety of grounds (Lees, 1994, pp. 449-450). Modern consumer culture is such that those of us for whom it [the mall] is designed are willing to suspend the privileges of public urban space to its relative benevolent authority, for our desire is such that we will readily accept nostalgia as a substitute for experience, absence for presence, and representation for authenticity (Goss, 1993, pp. 29-30).5 5 Thus, commercial spaces from this perspective are mere simulations of public space wherein some of the most important aspects of publicity are systematically denied, including the right to political action. For our purposes, however, the question remains, how do these issues play out in spaces which have adopted management schemes which are neither strictly public nor private, such as BIDs? We begin to address this question in the next section. Business Improvement Districts as Public Space ? One common response to the loss of foot traffic to out-of-town shopping malls, and to restore the vitality of downtowns and city centres, has been, in essence, to turn downtowns into malls themselves, or at least to give them more of the characteristics of malls that consumers apparently find 2266 appealing (Sorkin, 1992; Gottdiener, 1997; Goss, 1999). Festival marketplaces, pedestrian malls and the like have become prominent features of many American cities, where they often occupy central locations (Houston, 2004), and a number of these schemes (although certainly not all) have been organised using the BID model. These schemes typically combine elements of traditional city centres, in that they often remain legally public spaces, with privatised management forms, controlled and sanitised narrative structures/themes and carefully managed public relations (Briffault 1999; Lees 1994), a combination of attributes that are highly characteristic of neo-liberal urban development more broadly (Brenner and Theodore 2002). The BID model has become increasingly influential in the US, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and other contexts over the past several decades (Hoyt, 2003). Historically, BIDs rose out of, or in response to, the widespread public divestment of the early 1980s (Briffault, 1999). The urban decay of the late 20th century was seen as proof of the failure of public urban governance, which made space for private management to take control of public spaces. This history situates BIDs as an aspect of the neo-liberal project in which formerly public institutions/spaces/responsibilities became the domain of private managerial techniques and structures (MacLeod et al., 2003). The goal of these schemes is to bring private know-how and initiative to what is seen as the unwieldy and outdated public model (Briffault, 1999). BIDs are primarily characterised by the private management of public space, with this management funded through mandatory fees that are assessed on commercial properties within the district. Generally, BIDs are formed when property owners in a particular area vote to tax themselves for capital improvements, increased services such as trash removal and cohesive marketing strategies (Briffault, 1999; Walker, 2003). These districts are usually run by a board that is appointed or elected from the ranks of property and business owners who are impacted by the taxation (Briffault, 1999). Under this model, therefore, there is a potential temptation to conflate the 'public' with 'consumers' and the 'public good' with 'profitability'. BIDs have substantial power over the day-to-day operations of the spaces they manage, but insofar as those spaces remain public in the eyes of the law, they are constrained in their management of these spaces by constitutional limitations (Briffault, 1999; Walker, 2003). This layering of power in BID spaces ensures a negotiation between the private and public that is institutionalised in legal statute, thus creating a hybrid form of governance and space. Especially in the planning literature, BIDs have been primarily portrayed as innovative vehicles for economic revitalisation. Levy (2001) lauds the success of BIDs in revitalis- ing inner-city Philadelphia and prescribes the BID model for all manner of economic woe in other cities. Houston (2004, p. 26) claims "there are more than 1,000 business improvement districts (BIDs) in North America and hundreds more overseas, many in small communities". He strongly urges the adoption of the BID model of limited privatisation of public space management in small towns and large cities as a way of raising the level of services to merchants and consumers (Houston, 2004). In contrast, Gallagher (1995) portrays BIDS as a dystopian privatisation of the commons in a piece entitled "Trespasser on Main Street (You!)". Gallagher sees BIDs as truly a proposal to make a Fortune 500 C.E.O. think he's died and gone to capitalist heaven. He might think he was dreaming of an Ayn Rand-type presidential candidacy that aimed to let the 'superior' people govern themselves behind the rallying cry of 'one dollar, one vote' (Gallagher, 1995, p. 787). McFarlane (2004) speculates that the BID model reinforces racist and classist segregation through the devolution of the holistic conception of the city in favour of a collection of separate socioeconomic and racial enclaves 2267 (although her thought piece does not ground her observations empirically). Several studies have investigated the ability of BIDs to accomplish the institutional goals they advocate in terms of, for example, the effectiveness of BIDs at generating revenue for fee-payers (Mallet, 1994) or the impact of BIDs on crime in inner-city areas (Hoyt, 2004). Others have addressed how BIDs might be affected by constitutional law (Briffault, 1999; Hochleutner, 2003; Walker, 2003). Briffault (1999) warns that, although BIDs have significant power to improve the physical quality of many neighbourhoods, they also require significant and vigilant public oversight in order to ensure that they keep the wider public good the central focus of their activities, rather than slipping into myopic self-interest. Overall, the literature on BIDs stresses the legal differences and similarities between BIDs as hybrid spaces and traditional public spaces, but it does not address the on-the- ground effects of a private management mentality on the legal rights of citizens in these new spaces. It is suggested or implied in the literature that BIDs can be good citizens in improving urban space, but it is seemingly assumed that these quasi-public bodies will heed the law in good faith and allow such practices as free speech and political expression even when it impacts their bottom line. Furthermore, the literature on BIDs entirely neglects the practical effects of such organisations on the practice of political activism. Can overt politics and issue advocacy mix with consumption in BIDs and, if so, in what ways and with what limitations? Despite their apparent legal 'publicness', are there ways in which BIDs limit who gets to speak and how within their borders? Although these are important and timely questions (especially given broader concerns about the suppression of political dissent in the current US political climate), as yet they have not been addressed in an empirically informed way. In the next section, we turn to a more in-depth discussion of the Church Street Marketplace as a context for empirical research and our methodological approach. Research Context and Methodological Approach The Church Street Marketplace The Church Street Marketplace is a four-block pedestrian mall in the central business district of Burlington, Vermont, and serves as the main centre of pedestrian and retail activity in the city. With a population of approximately 40 000 people, Burlington is the largest city in the state of Vermont and forms the core of the state's only census- recognised metropolitan area (population 147 000). Like many cities in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Burlington began to have anxieties about the future of its downtown within the context of spreading retail development in the suburbs. Opened in 1981 on what was once simply Church Street (and the BID is still often colloquially referred to simply as Church Street), the Marketplace was explicitly designed as an attempt to protect the city's retail centre from encroachment by freestanding malls in surrounding communities (Church Street Marketplace, 2004a). The Marketplace is surfaced with bricks and landscaped with rows of small trees, periodic benches and several large boulders which have been placed on each block of the mall (see Figures 1 and 2). Canopies extend nine feet into the street from many of the buildings, a distance roughly equal to the location of the old street curbs/sidewalks from before the mall was bricked-over. Commercially, Church Street is home to many restaurants and cafes that provide outdoor seating in the warmer months, local and national retail establishments, and a large number of service-sector offices. The street is extremely busy and has been nationally recognised as a model of success in downtown revitalisation efforts (Church Street Marketplace, 2004b). There is also a privately owned shopping mall that fronts onto the Marketplace, which is known as the Burlington Town Center. The retail tenants of the Marketplace itself are about evenly divided between locally and nationally owned businesses (Workman, 2002). 2268 Figure 1. Church Street marketplace. Photo: Nathan Clough. Over the past several decades, Burlington, as well as the state of Vermont more broadly, has developed a (perhaps somewhat overstated) reputation for having an active 'progressive' political culture and city administration (Guma, 1989). Unusually for the US, the city in fact has an established third party (the Progressive Party) which regularly wins Figure 2. Green party tabling on the Church Street marketplace. Photo: Robert Vanderbeck. 2269 seats on the city council and which has begun to have a state-wide influence. As suggested in Brooks' account of Burlington, various kinds of issue advocacy and political activity are plainly evident on the Marketplace on any given day (weather permitting). This activity takes a variety of forms, from relatively passive tabling by individuals to demonstrations that attract thousands. In response to the US-led invasions and subsequent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, a number of demonstrations, protests and rallies (several quite large) took place that often utilised the Marketplace (some with permits, some without, as we will discuss). On a more routine basis, groups (many of whom would be popularly identified as left-of-centre politically6) can be found making both sanctioned and sometimes unsanctioned uses of the space, from the Green Party setting up an informational table (see Figure 2) to the anti- fluoridation campaign distributing literature, the local Marxist/Leninist organisation selling its weekly newspaper, or the Queer Liberation Army holding a renegade bake sale in drag. It is the Marketplace District Commission that sets policy regarding which of these uses are sanctioned and which are not. In the next section, we describe in greater detail how this commission is organised. Organisation and Management of the BID As indicated previously, the Marketplace Commission is a quasi-governmental body whose membership is appointed by the Burlington City Council. The Burlington city charter (Article 89, section 322) specifies the make-up of the Commission as consisting of nine members, at least five of whom must be residents of the city of Burlington. Furthermore, not more than four of the commissioners may be from any one political party, two must be managers or owners of businesses on Church Street, two more members must be downtown retailers, one of whom must maintain a business that is located outside the Church Street Marketplace BID. This elaborate set of rules regarding the make-up of the commission is meant, at least ostensibly, to bring balance to the body and to ensure that its actions benefit the city of Burlington as a whole rather than just the proprietors of Church Street businesses. At the same time, the composition of the commission ensures for the landowners that their investment in the Marketplace (in the form of fees) will remain substantially under their own control; this is in keeping with the way BID boards are generally constituted (Briffault, 1999). The Church Street Marketplace District Commission has the power to tax the owners of non-residential properties located within the Church Street Marketplace District in the form of common area fees (Burlington City Charter Art. 89, sec. 325). These fees are assessed based on the fair market value of properties and constitute the majority of the Church Street Marketplace District budget. Other funds for the operation of the district are raised through permitting fees. The budget of the Church Street Marketplace is spent on sanitation, snow removal, capital improvements, advertising and the salaries of employees including the executive director and the administrative assistant. Commissioners serve on a strictly volunteer basis and are not compensated monetarily. The Commission is overseen by the Burlington City Council, which maintains the Commission in a largely advisory capacity, although the Commission has considerable power in the day-to-day operations of the street. While the executive director of the Marketplace works with the Marketplace Commission, he reports directly to the mayor (rather than to the commissioners) who has the power to hire and fire at his discretion. The Commission meets monthly to discuss issues of importance to the functioning of the district. These meetings are open to the public (although they are typically held at 8.30 am). Topics of discussion range from changing Marketplace rules to allow street vendors on side streets, to amending rules on non-profit tabling, to altering the size and composition of Commission sub-committees. The Commission generally deals with strategic issues, general publicity, fundraising, non-profit 2270 tabling rules and other relatively long-term facets of running the BID, while Marketplace staff are in charge of day-to-day operations and the execution of Commission decisions. These monthly meetings are supposed to serve as a forum for members of the public to air any grievances that they might have about the rules or management of the Marketplace (and, in our experience, are infrequently attended by members of the public). However, meeting times and dates are subject to change and there seems to be no mechanism for notifying the public of these changes in a timely manner. Methodological Approach Our investigation of the Marketplace consisted of a mixture of participant observation, in-depth interviews and analysis of relevant documents (including the city charter, the Marketplace website, historical documents relating to downtown Burlington and a variety of press reports). We conducted approximately 80 hours of focused participant observation on the Marketplace during the months of June-September 2004, in addition to many more hours of less formal participant observation over a period of several years.7 7 This observation was conducted in both small increments of one to two hours at a time, and in several full-day observation sessions. While conducting this observation, we were particularly conscious of observing demonstrations, chatting with people sitting at informational tables or handing out political fliers and watching police responses to political activity. Three Church Street Marketplace District Commission monthly meetings were also observed and detailed notes taken. Participant observation served not only as a rich data source in its own right but also allowed us to identify and make contact with potential interviewees and generate an appropriate semi-structured interview guide. In all, we conducted 19 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with relevant actors, including local activists, Marketplace administrators and Commission members, the Mayor of Burlington, a city councillor and a representative of the police. We employed a purposive sampling strategy (informed by prior participant observation) that sought to include a wide range of different kinds of activists, as well as representatives from the various bodies and institutions we knew to be involved in making policy and regulating the space. These formal interviews are supplemented by numerous less formal discussions with local activists, Marketplace administrators, police officers and local government officials. All formal interviews were recorded and detailed field notes were made of informal discussions. Materials were analysed using relatively standard procedures for qualitative analysis, which involved an iterative process of identifying important themes, systematically coding data and developing interpretations. All names which appear in the analysis (with the exception of elected officials) are pseudonyms. Managing Politics and Consumption on the Marketplace The Church Street Theme and the Regulation of Political Activity We begin our analysis by examining the active construction and maintenance of the Church Street Marketplace as a themed retail environment and how political activity is understood by key actors to fit within this theme. Like other BIDS, the primary raison d'etre for the Marketplace is to ensure maximal accumulation for the fee payers of the district and to thereby improve the image and livability of the city (Briffault, 1999; Hochleutner, 2003; Mallet, 1994; Levy, 2001). The Marketplace Commission explicitly describes its mission as the creation of an "economically successful downtown which is vibrant, clean, and safe" (Church Street Marketplace, 2004c). Decisions about the Marketplace are evaluated by the BID based on how they add to or detract from this mission, with certain constraints (which we will elaborate) (city attorney, interview 2004; Marketplace executive director, interview 2004). One of the primary means by 2271 which the Commission attempts to accomplish its mission is through the careful theming of the BID. Gottdiener defines a themed environment in the following way [A themed environment is] ... the material product of two social processes. First, attention is directed quite literally to environments, that is, to large material forms that are socially constructed which serve as containers for human interaction. These milieus are social spaces within which the public can mingle. Secondly, themed material forms are also products of a cultural production process that seeks to use constructed spaces as symbols (Gottdiener, 1997, pp. 4-5). Although difficult to capture in one phrase, the theme of the Marketplace is perhaps best described as 'congenial, traditional urbanism', as the Marketplace intentionally attempts to invoke nostalgia for the mythologised, pedestrian-friendly American main street. The architect who designed the Marketplace in the 1980s, along with several others involved in the planning process, in fact travelled to Disney World to study Disney's Mainstreet USA, and the revamped Church Street explicitly draws on aspects of the design and motifs of the theme park (architect, personal interview 2004; see also Workman, 2002). Particularly in the warmer months, the Commission sponsors/licenses musicians, jugglers, a tight rope walker and unicyclist, as well as multiple outdoor festivals and events that are intended to advance the theme. A variety of regulations are intended to ensure that both the physical space and the atmosphere of the Marketplace are consistent with this vision of congenial urbanism. However, unlike Disney's Mainstreet USA, which is a privately owned space, the Marketplace remains legally public. Therefore, the ability of the Marketplace Commission to ensure that uses of the street are consistent with their vision is often mitigated by legal necessity, pressure from activists and by local government oversight. As a legally public street, the Marketplace is subject to certain constitutional restrictions on the types of regulations that can be enforced therein. These requirements allow the regulation of speech only in the areas of 'time, place, and manner'. The US Constitution (as interpreted by rulings in Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 US 288 (1984) and Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 US 781 (1989)) does not allow cities to discriminate based on the content of speech, but it does allow them to disallow actions that may significantly impact the interests of the city. In the words of the Burlington City Attorney's office The City of Burlington recognises and encourages Vermont's vibrant political culture and the role that the city's traditional public fora (our streets, sidewalks, and parks) play in it. As part of our role in protecting First Amendment rights, we have a constitutionally permitted function to adopt and enforce content neutral, time, place, and manner regulations to protect the significant governmental interests that are impacted by the use of our streets, including uses that are protected by the First Amendment (City Attorney, letter, 8 July 2002). The Church Street Marketplace regulates protests, demonstrations, and rallies as 'special events' and as such they are not specifically differentiated from other kinds of public gatherings (Church Street Marketplace, 2004d). Applicants who want to stage a protest, demonstration or rally on the Marketplace are required to supply information as to the time, size, tactics and goals of the gathering to both the staff of the Marketplace Commission and the Burlington Police Department. Permits are granted or denied based on the availability of the space at the desired time, the potential benefits or drawbacks of each specific event to the Marketplace and its vendors, and the availability of public resources (police, fire, etc.) to ensure public safety during the event (Marketplace executive director, interview 2004; Marketplace administrative assistant, interview 2004). This process of permitting is sufficiently flexible to allow the Director of the Commission significant leeway to decide what kinds of events will be allowed and under what conditions they can proceed. 2272 Non-profit and political tabling is regulated through the allocation of eight specific locations on the street reserved solely for the use of issue- based tabling. The Marketplace distributes a flier of rules and regulations for non-profit tabling to interested parties. Until August 2004, the Marketplace explicitly refused to issue tabling permits during all weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, reflecting its desire not to have political activity interfere with the busiest shopping days of the year. (The rule was changed during the research time due to pressure from local activists.)8 It is often the case that the number of applicants to use tabling space on the Marketplace on a given day is greater than the number of spaces provided. When this occurs, groups are given priority on a 'first come, first served' basis. The city of Burlington created a Pedestrian Right-Of-Way ordinance that imposed an exclusion zone on Church Street that extends nine feet out from all building fronts on the Marketplace. In the Commission's guidelines, "this includes the area underneath all the glass canopies and continues where no canopies exist to form a straight line from Pearl Street south to Main Street on all four blocks of the Marketplace" (Church Street Marketplace, 2004d). The ordinance also prohibits individuals or groups from sitting, lying down or blocking in any way the flow of pedestrians in the aforementioned zone. Although this law was first designed in response to the behaviour of fans of the rock band Phish,9 it has directly impacted the activities of some political users of the street by diminishing the amount of Marketplace space that is available for political uses and by placing certain protest tactics, particularly those that are stationary rather than transitory in nature, into uncertain legal territory (Marketplace executive director, personal e-mail 2005; Marketplace Commissioner, interview 2004). The city also has an ordinance forbidding 'Aggressive Solicitation and Panhandling'. Among other things, this ordinance makes it illegal to: approach, speak to or follow a person before, during or after soliciting if that conduct is intended or likely to cause inti- midation, continue to solicit after the person has said no, intentionally or recklessly block or interfere with the safe or free passage of a pedestrian or vehicle, or speak in a volume unreasonably loud under the circumstances (Burlington Panhandling Ordinance, 2004). Political Activism as a 'Quirky' Asset or \Scary' Liability The Marketplace does not obstruct, and specifically encourages, certain political uses of the street, especially those that are passive, friendly and institutional in nature. These passive, unobtrusive political uses of the street are, overall, viewed as instrumental in (or at least not contrary to) the pursuit of the Marketplace theme of congenial urbanity and are thought to help differentiate the street from out-of-town malls and shopping centres. John, an influential commissioner and business owner on the Marketplace, suggests that political uses of the street significantly add to the ability of Church Street to attract consumers If you're a democracy you need to have gathering places, you need to have places for political thought and opposition, and all that stuff. And so, as much as it can be a pain in the neck when the 'anti-retail' people want to ... protest on the day after Thanksgiving, you've got to sort of tolerate it and realize it's part of the quirkiness and the uniqueness that makes us different than the Mall of America or Mapletree Place [a suburban 'big box' retail development] and all that. And we really need to trumpet that kind of awkwardness, and freedom, and quirkiness, because it's what makes us unique enough to have someone bother to come down here and enjoy the commerce that we're really hoping that everybody does. Additionally, the commissioner related a story about certain dignitaries who visited the Marketplace from a city in Japan in order to get new ideas for making their city more vibrant. These people from Japan came and visited, they were, like, a mayor and some real 2273 estate guys and ... [the Japanese mayor] kept saying 'democracy, democracy' and I was like 'what are you talking about?'. And it took me a long time to figure out what they were talking about. What has happened in Japan is that private developers have bought large tracts in the inner cities and not only, through sort of government leasing they owned the buildings but they also own the street and the sidewalk, everything. And what they were saying was that, as more of Japan goes that way, there is no chance for public assembly. In his interpretation, the Japanese visitors were deeply impressed with the appearance of publicity and wanted to know how Church Street was able to get so much 'democracy' to occur on the Marketplace. The presence of activists engaged in various political activities gives credibility to the claims of the Marketplace to be an 'authentic' city centre. The commissioner told this story in order to convey his recognition of the value of a public/political presence on the street and its impact on Marketplace visitors. Thus, the BID is aware of, and encourages, certain types, and quantities, of political activism on the street in pursuit of attracting consumers. However, not all types of activism and issue advocacy are viewed as assets by those involved in managing, regulating and policing Church Street. Marketplace and city officials often describe activism as 'scary' when that activism is judged to be contrary to the interests of the BID, such as when activists employ shocking or offensive tactics that might detract from the supposedly family-oriented nature of the street. In the words of Burlington's mayor, "[the Marketplace] is a family space, so you don't want to cross those lines in terms of obscenities or inappropriate behaviour" (Mayor, personal interview 2004). The mayor also stipulated that activism must be "tasteful", legally permitted and "not obtrusive" for it to be an appropriate use of the street (Mayor, personal interview 2004). In other words, in order for activism to avoid the unacceptable 'scary' designation, it needs to be amenable to middle-class American notions of propriety and not transgress the standard boundaries of consumption as the primary legitimate means of being-in-public (i.e. of not being "obtrusive" of what is assumed to be the real reason people are on the Marketplace- to consume). Indeed, during interviews and participant observation consumers were often discursively positioned by the members of the regulatory apparatus10 as relatively naive persons who need to be shielded from the distasteful and frightening realities of political speech in the city. Concerns over 'scary' activism stemmed in large part from the fact that Church Street is a commercial area that competes with private consumption centres (such as suburban malls) that expressly forbid any type of potentially offensive or challenging political speech. Marketplace Commissioner John explicitly linked scary activism to concerns over consumer flight: "You want to encourage the suburban housewife to bring her kids down and to shop at Old Navy [the retail store], you don't want some gory scene with makeup [scaring her away]". He continues So a lot of those things you struggle with, and certainly if you are looking for an audience and you want to create some shock value, then this is the place to do it. But do you at the same time want to scare people and send them running to the safety of Mapletree Place? Where they can't assemble freely and you can't, you know, pursue democracy? You're doing yourself a disservice if you lose your audience because every time you come down here someone scares the hell out of you, or scares your kids ... So, for the greater good, and for the furthering ultimately of democracy and your chance to do all that, the better we keep all of that in check the longer all of that will last, the longer the venue will last. And if we let it just go unchecked, and so many people were hassled, or horrified, or scared to death, there wouldn't be any customers here, and all of those groups that wanted to get their 2274 point across would be screaming from the sidewalk on (the highway) trying to reach the customers that are on the other side of the buildings where the big green area is at Mapletree Place, because that's as close as you can get if you want to have a die-in [there]. Thus, aggressive political activism is situated as a potentially powerful counter- consumptive agent. John naturalises the dichotomisation of commercial and political uses of the Marketplace through the argument that, without controls, political activists would deprive themselves of an audience. Similarly, the executive director of the Marketplace recounted a story about consumers complaining to him when they were confronted with activists protesting the war in Iraq through the use of burqa-like costumes and baby-dolls wrapped in cloth as though they were casualties of the war. This type of activism is not illegal but it is discouraged on the Marketplace. There were ... some things that a political group was doing that were scaring little kids, and we had to ask them 'Can you make your point, but do it in a way so that the kids on the street aren't scared?' (Marketplace executive director, personal interview 2004).11 The types of speech that are encouraged by the Marketplace are those that do not challenge the theme of the street as a place for consumption. These amicable types of activism act as sorts of stage props. A table with a friendly volunteer politely supporting John Kerry (D) for President adds to the aura of the Marketplace as an authentic, traditional, American space with the visible trappings of democracy, in contrast to shopping malls and big box stores. While the role of public space in democracy is acknowledged by Marketplace officials, the role of Church Street as a public space is constantly negotiated through the differential inclusion and exclusion of various political voices and actions. In the discourse of the Marketplace, Church Street is both a space for free expression and a space wherein expression must be carefully managed in order to maintain competitiveness. Political speech is both a burden and a primary differentiation device between the Marketplace and its competitors. Those voices and actions judged to contradict the theme of the Marketplace are marginalised through the invocation of various material and discursive tactics. We next address one of the most important of these tactics. Public Safety, Congested Streets and Discursive Tactics Since the Marketplace cannot discriminate against political uses of the street based on the content of those uses, they often seem to rely on issues of public safety in order to justify significant regulation of those uses. Public safety is seen to be an issue on the Marketplace largely because of the purported congestion of the street, and the argument is often made by Marketplace officials that the street is too congested to allow certain kinds of protests or demonstrations that would make the street even more dangerously crowded. Discourses of congestion, as they are invoked by the regulatory apparatus, are on close examination deeply contradictory. An oft-stated goal of the Commission relating to target density of use is actually to increase the number of consumers and the density of usage on the street. Increasing outdoor seating for restaurants and cafes on the Marketplace, for example, has been a major goal of late (Redlich, 2005). As one commissioner explained I think that there is still plenty of space ... we had a study done, back about 10 years ago, where we tried to identify [optimum] density. We brought in urban planners, some outdoor designers, outdoor architects, and stuff like that and said 'You tell us, what sort of limitations should we start thinking about?' ... And it was amazing what they came back with-the more the better! What [we are] trying to do here is create a plaza feel, kind of on the European model where more is better ... So, from our 2275 standpoint, we haven't been restrictive on that at all, certainly there are some instances, but that report is where we look to, and we are nowhere near the density that they ... thought was healthy. (Commissioner, personal interview 2004) This claim regarding the availability of significant extra space for commercial applications contrasts with the dominant view of the Marketplace on the availability of space for political uses of the street. In his interview, the executive director of the Marketplace repeatedly stressed that Church Street is a limited space and that, therefore, political uses of the space need to be regulated We ask people to remember too that there are more sidewalk cafes than there were before, there are more street vendors, there's all this other stuff, so while everybody wants a piece of the street, we can only parcel it out, it's a finite resource, we can't just say 'whatever, come on down' ... There are times when it gets really congested... you don't want people to feel like they can't get around because they've got other choices [of where to shop besides Church Street], they can go someplace else. And there are people who will say that that's elitist, and well, not when it comes to pedestrian flow and safety, and people's rights to be able to get someplace ... Again, when we think of the Marketplace it's a very small, compressed area [emphasis added]. Additionally, Lorraine, the administrative assistant for the Commission who issues permits to groups, added that political activities are allowed or not Depending on how many people they are talking about, and again if we can accommodate that many people because we're limited, we've got a lot of stores, and a lot of pedestrians, and cafes, and everything else, so we're limited with what we can accommodate. The focus on the right to use the public space of Church Street as a space for political activism is thus reframed in terms of public safety and common sense. Political activism is posed as a potential public safety hazard due to the congestion of the street, which is largely attributed (unproblematically) to the density of commercial uses on it, while increased density of those same commercial activities is viewed as beneficial. Although not directly stated by Marketplace officials, discourses of congestion and public safety seem to be invoked selectively to ban political uses of the street which explode the theme of the Marketplace (by, for example, not being 'tasteful', in the mayor's words), rather than being applied in a content-neutral way. Next, we illustrate this tendency through a discussion of two political uses of the Marketplace that were respectively, disallowed and encouraged, illustrating the strategic deployment of discourses of congestion and public safety in order to discourage uses of the space of the Marketplace that are seen as inappropriate, unbeneficial, or simply inconvenient to the BID. 'Die-in' on Church Street Each year, the educational non-profit AIDS Action Vermont (AAV) stages a 'walk-a-thon' fundraiser that passes along the Church Street Marketplace. This event serves to raise a significant portion of the non-profit's annual budget while also greatly adding to the visibility of its cause since it moves through perhaps the most 'public' space in the state of Vermont. In 2004, the executive director of AAV decided that the organisation needed to be more aggressive in its tactics due to her perception that HIV education had "taken a backseat in society". Hence, in addition to the usual 'walk-a-thon', the organisation planned to stage a 'die-in' on the Marketplace as a means of calling attention to the on-going challenges posed by HIV/ / AIDS at the local level and beyond (personal interview, 2004). The 'die-in' was to occur several days prior to the 'walk-a-thon'. The job of organising the 'die-in' was delegated to an employee, Bobby, who contacted the Marketplace Commission and requested 2276 a permit for a stationary vigil in front of Old Navy (considered one of the more desirable areas by activists because of the heavy foot traffic due to its proximity to the entrance to the Town Center Mall). The executive director of the Marketplace granted a permit for the date and time desired, and he asked (although did not mandate) that the organisation stay within a 10- by 10-foot area during their demonstration. At the same time, the employee also procured a permit for the annual 'walk-a-thon', which was to occur several days later. As Bobby explains it We secured a permit for the vigil and explained to them what we were going to be doing, that we would have 10 to 20 people in the 'die-in', that we would not be moving, that we would not be making any noise, and it would be a 'static protest', (that's) what it was called when I had spoken with them. And it was all okayed, and we were told that we needed to be 9 feet from the entrance of any business, and 15 feet from all carts or whatever... and so we did that, we stayed in the middle of the street so that we could be sure we were in the guidelines of the permit. Several days later the non-profit staged their 'die-in' (see Figure 3) at the time and place prescribed by their permit We plopped ourselves down there, laid down, and basically were there [roughly] 45 minutes; we had a permit to be there for an hour, from 12 to 1, during the lunch hour ... We were all lying around and we had statistics [about AIDS deaths] pinned to our chests and I think that it was shocking, it was meant to be shocking, it was meant to stop people and to [make them] think about the impact that HIV has on our community ... Then, around quarter to one, the (executive director) of Figure 3. 'Die-in' on the Marketplace. Photo: with permission. 2277 the Marketplace came down and was rather upset because he felt like he had somehow been bamboozled (AAV executive director, personal interview 2004). The executive director of the Marketplace told the 'die-in' participants that they needed to get into the 10- by 10-foot area he had mentioned while issuing the permit. He was angry because, in his view, the nature of the protest had been misrepresented to him, or at least not fully explained.l2 The director then left and returned a few minutes later with a police officer. The demonstrators were allowed to remain for the rest of the hour their permit allowed and then were asked to leave. Bobby explained the group's bafflement at the response they had received from the Marketplace We were staying away from vendors, we didn't feel like we were blocking traffic, people were definitely moving on the sides of us, so we thought that that was all right ... He [the Marketplace executive director] said because we were in the middle of the road [we were blocking traffic] ... and I was like, 'OK, where should we be? Because we're 9 feet from all the doors, and 15 feet from all vendors, and yet we can't be in the middle of the [pedestrianised] street, so where do you want us to be?' In truth, as Figure 3 shows, the 'die-in' hardly posed a major obstacle to foot traffic and certainly not more than events routinely permitted by the Marketplace, such as the high- wire act which routinely takes place during the summer in precisely the same spot as the 'die-in' and attracts large crowds, or the annual Ferrari automobile show (a fundraiser for a less controversial non-profit, the King Street Youth Center) that blocks off a large section of the street for an entire day (see Figure 4). The next day, the executive director of the Marketplace contacted AAV and informed them that he had revoked the original 'walk-a-thon' permit and had issued a new permit with some added provisions. The major change to the revised permit was the condition that the non-profit hire two private security Figure 4. Ferrari show to benefit local youth centre. Photo: Robert Vanderbeck. 2278 guards at their own expense to accompany them on their march, ostensibly in order to guarantee that they kept moving while on Church Street and did not block the Marketplace to shoppers. The cost of hiring these guards was approximately $150. AAV acquiesced and hired the security guards because the 'walk-a-thon' is such an important fundraiser for the organisation that they did not feel they could afford to defy the Marketplace Commission (AAV executive director, personal interview 2004). This shifting of the financial burden associated with regulation from the municipality to the citizens/activists engaged in constitutionally protected activities represents a significant departure from traditional methods of financing public safety services wherein the regulating agency absorbs the costs of that regulation (Boghosian, 2004). Thus, the right to use public space for political expression is converted into a commercial transaction in which the activist becomes a consumer of regulated public space rather than a citizen exercising her rights (Sennett, 1974; Habermas, 1991).13 In terms of the legality of the 'die-in', the executive director of the Marketplace suggested that AAV was in violation of their permit because they were blocking pedestrian flow and creating a public safety hazard. In an e-mail, he expressed his belief that the 'die-in' was illegal because permits are required for blocking any public thoroughfare and that by misrepresenting the nature of their protest AAV had broken city ordinance (Marketplace executive director, personal e-mail, 2005). In a further communication, however, the Marketplace executive director expressed his general opposition to future 'die-ins' and his refusal to issue further permits to them because ['Die-ins'] restrict people's access to the numerous commercial and non-commercial activities co-existing on the Street and we must effectively co-ordinate the multiple uses of the our limited space (Marketplace executive director, personal e-mail, 19 February 2005). However, based on the criteria given by Marketplace officials for deciding that this demonstration was a hazard-that it "restricts people's access to ... commercial and non-commercial activities" (Marketplace executive director, personal e-mail, 19 February 2005)-it is clear that this invocation of congestion is used strategically against some types of political activity/issue advocacy while it is explicitly waived for others. Dean for America on the Marketplace For much of 2003, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean was hailed by national political pundits as one of the leading contenders for the Democratic party's nomination for US President in the 2004 elections (he eventually lost the nomination to John Kerry of Massachusetts). Although he had been campaigning unofficially for quite some time, on 23 June 2003, the Church Street Marketplace was used, at Dean's request, as the stage from which he officially launched his bid for the nomination, as enthusiastic supporters waved "Dean for America" signs and cheered loudly and the recorded sounds of Aretha Franklin singing "Freedom" boomed loudly from speakers on the Marketplace and surrounding streets. Local and national news media were on hand to cover the carefully choreographed event, an event which resulted in the total closure of a large section of the Marketplace (approaching half of its total length) for the better part of a day. As anticipated, the event attracted thousands of onlookers (both the authors were present as observers), with the street so jammed that one had literally to push through crowds of people to move even a short distance (see Figure 5). As the local paper reported the next day, the event was so congested that during Dean's speech "[Many onlookers] took refuge ... atop the parking garage because the streets were choked with people" (Burlington Free Press, 24 June 2003). Institutional political rallies such as this are seen to bring a feeling of distinction and importance to the street through association with established political authorities and thus are the ultimate instrumentally useful political activities that occur on the Marketplace. This 2279 Figure 5. Howard Dean on the Marketplace. Photo: Dean for America, used with permission point was made explicit by the administrative assistant to the Commission when asked why the unusually large rally for presidential candidate Dean was allowed [He is] a Former governor, and you know we felt it would be good for Church Street because of the exposure and sometimes ... you just feel you need to do it (Marketplace administrative assistant, personal interview 2004). However, substantially smaller uses by more radical groups, or by groups using aggressive tactics, are discouraged based on their supposed threat to public safety. In the case of the AAV 'die-in', a demonstration involving 20 people received considerable negative attention (both from the Marketplace and the local press) due largely to the perception that they were a public safety hazard. On the other hand, a speech by Howard Dean that drew thousands of people who 'choked' the street was allowed to occur and was celebrated as a 'good' thing for the Marketplace. The examples we have discussed are hardly exceptional, but rather are representative of a wider trend of favouring particular political interests over others through the permitting process. Briefly, during the research period, a local labour organisation's request to use the section of Church Street in front of City Hall for a rally was denied due to a purported lack of space (labor organiser, personal interview 2004), yet soon thereafter the space was used for a large rally that celebrated Senator Patrick Leahy's (D) accomplishments raising funds for a new section of the Marketplace. In roughly the same time-period, Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders (I), the state's only representative, was permitted to use the entire northern section (excluding the pedestrian right of way) for several hours on a weekday afternoon for a political rally, as well as to use amplified sound (something expressly forbidden by the Marketplace). 2280 Less influential groups routinely have static demonstrations shunted off to less visible locations off the Marketplace, raising questions (both constitutional and otherwise) about the extent to which the regulation of politics is truly 'content-neutral' and the visible political life of the BID a veneer which covers something more troubling. Conclusions In this article, we have provided an empirically grounded examination of the relationship between politics and consumption in one successful (at least in an economic sense) business improvement district, the Church Street Marketplace, with particular attention to both the disjunctures and potential junctures which exist between the economic mandates of the BID and the democratic mandates of public space. These (dis)junctures are evident in the Marketplace's attempts to differentiate itself from other, strictly private, centres of consumption through its seeming embrace of the trappings of democracy, while simultaneously seeking to distance itself from other 'public' spaces through its adoption of a quasi-private management structure, careful theming and its attempts to ensure that a particular kind of publicity is enacted on its street. Far from outright banning overt politics and issue advocacy within its borders (as is typically the case in spaces such as shopping malls, with which downtown areas compete), the BID in fact tolerates, and in some cases encourages, certain kinds of political activity to the extent that this is viewed as advancing the larger theme of what we have called 'congenial urbanism' on the Marketplace. While the BID is constitutionally obliged to apply 'content-neutral' standards in regulating uses of the street, activities which potentially disrupt or transgress the theme through aggressive or shocking tactics run the risk of being denied access to the street through discursive tactics that tie public safety to the accumulation interests of Marketplace merchants. The structure of the Marketplace Commission itself, with its mandated heavy presence of business owners and capital interests, all but ensures that, given a choice between space for activists and space for more outdoor cafe seating, seating will take precedence as the proper and legitimate use of the street. Even if a veneer of politics is permitted (or even encouraged) as part of a theme, the very practice of regulated theming is in many respects at odds with the notion of a vibrant activist culture, given that activists are often seeking to destabilise dominant and taken-for- granted understandings or, put another way, to change society's theme(s). Although the discourse of key actors involved in regulating the Marketplace often gestures towards an appreciation for democracy, we would argue that what the Marketplace strives to produce is what Habermas (1991) calls a mass of consumers rather than a politically engaged public engaged in widespread rational argumentation and debate over issues of importance. In this, the Marketplace is of course not unique; indeed, it has been the goal of the spaces it partially emulates (the Paris Arcades, Disney World, private malls) for much of modernity (Benjamin, 1999; Habermas, 1991; Gottdiener, 1997; Zukin, 1995). Although the BID is technically subject to oversight from elected officials in the city, there is little evidence that the goals of elected officials differ substantially from the overall goals of the Marketplace Commission. As much of the literature on neo-liberal urbanism suggests (for example, Brenner and Theodore, 2002), local governments often see their own success (especially in relation to economic development) as tied to the success of these (semi)privatised transformations of urban space. Indeed, in the case of the Marketplace, the domain of government (public safety) is the selectively applied foil used to disallow certain forms of political speech and action on the Marketplace. This said, however, it is also important to note that, perhaps paradoxically, the BID, by virtue of its success in luring people downtown when otherwise many would go to private malls or out-of-town shopping centres, actually creates something of an 2281 audience for those activists who play by the BIDs rules (or manage to transgress them successfully, such as when unpermitted demonstrations or actions occur; see Clough and Vanderbeck, 2006). This is a contradiction recognised by a number of the activists with whom we spoke. Although many felt quite circumscribed in what they could do on the Marketplace (and a few worried that they were at risk of being co-opted into the Marketplace's consumption spectacle), they also found the Marketplace to be perhaps the most effective avenue they had for reaching the citizens of Burlington.14 The story of the Marketplace, we would argue, is not a completely straightforward one of the silencing of politics through privatised management but, rather, one which poses both new obstacles and new potentialities for activists. Finally, although we make no claim in this paper that the Marketplace is representative of all BIDs, there are clear similarities between its management structure and those of many other BIDs and therefore there are likely to be similar tensions (although perhaps resolved in different ways) between the mandates of profit and democracy. Vermont's political culture is perhaps in certain respects distinctive from other areas of the US, but our findings are especially troubling given the city's reputation as a bastion of political progressi- vism. With the proliferation and diffusion of the BID model in a range of international contexts, there is an urgent need for other in-depth studies of the issues we have raised in this paper in other contexts, with a recognition that the presence of a few tables with pamphlets and some visible, permitted protest does not necessarily reflect a full appreciation of the 'right to the city'. Notes 1. 'Bobos' is a shorthand expression that Brooks uses for 'bourgeois bohemians'. 2. We recognise that many seemingly everyday activities can in fact be considered political, from the consumption choices that people make to the subtle ways in which they transgress dominant norms of behaviour in public space (for example, young people skateboarding on city streets or same-sex couples holding hands in public). However, for our purposes here we focus on intentional efforts to convey political messages or advocate particular issues in an organised way, a surprisingly underresearched topic in the public space literature. This is not to negate the importance of other, everyday kinds of politics. 3. Here, we wish to signal our awareness of debates about the possibilities and limitations of 'cyberspace' for democratic practice. While a full engagement with this is beyond our scope here, it is our view that, whatever role cyberspace may play in democracy, it cannot fully replace the need for 'real' public space, not least because of the economic barriers to accessing cyberspace and the potential for its censorship. 4. Current court rulings suggest that the right to free speech and expression does not apply in private consumption spaces such as shopping malls (see Mitchell, 2003, for a discussion). 5. Of course, this is a somewhat broad generalisation. As some scholars of consumption emphasise (for example, Jackson et al., 2000, various essays), consumption practices are complex and consumers are not mere dupes who simply passively accept what consumption spaces and retailers offer them. Clearly, not all consumers will find this suspension of rights desirable, or make these substitutions entirely straightforwardly, if at all. Goss' remarks do speak powerfully though, to the tactics of retailers and managers of commercial space who would like consumers unquestioningly to make the substitutions he describes. 6. During the months of focused participant observation, the only tablers whom we saw on the Marketplace who would popularly be construed as 'conservative' were a Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor and a few evangelical Christian groups distributing Bibles. An e-mail to the University of Vermont College Republicans enquiring as to why they did not make use of the Marketplace (unlike their Democratic counterparts) indicated that the group opposed doing this because as "the political party oriented towards increasing business" they did not want to do anything which could impede people's shopping practices. 7. At the time, both authors lived in proximity to the Marketplace and were regularly able to observe what went on there. 8. Space considerations prevent us from engaging in a full discussion of activists' practices of resistance to Marketplace 2282regulation, but see Clough and Vanderbeck (2006). 9. After a nearby show during the mid 1990s, fans of the band Phish (an act that attracts audiences of tens of thousands of revellers to multiday, outdoor concerts) converged on the city and commenced to occupy the Marketplace for several days (including lying down on the pedestrianised street) to the apparent annoyance and disgust of local merchants. 10. We use this phrase to include Marketplace Commissioners and employees, elected officials and the police with a recognition that there were also sometimes differences of opinion and differing agendas, despite the significant ways these groups do work in concert. 11. One group which advocates Palestinian independence reported being strongly pressured by the Marketplace not to hold controversial signs during their vigils. 12. It should be noted that the director of the Marketplace argues that AAV failed to mention that they would be lying down on the street and that this represented a significant misrepresentation of the nature of the demonstration (Marketplace director, e-mail, 4 November 2004). Whether there was any misrepresentation by the employee or a misunderstanding as to what constitutes a 'die-in' is irresolvable and not essential to the argument here. 13. In response to a query, the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union makes the following comments on the Marketplace's tactics in relation to AIDS Action VT If payment amounts [for protests/demonstrations] are based on the content of the speech, the city is violating citizens' first amendment right ... If the fee is only required of certain groups, and certainly if the fee was added on as an afterthought once the city became upset with the group's 'die-in' static demonstration, the city's permit scheme is not content-neutral, nor does it contain 'specific and narrowly defined standards' which the National Lawyers Guild claims all ordinances must have (personal e-mail, 17 November 2004). 14. One socialist activist we interviewed, who had lived in Burlington but relocated to Oklahoma City, drove this point home, emphasising that there was almost no space in Oklahoma City to have exchanges with people in public such as she and her comrades had had on Church Street. References Banerjee, T. (2001) The future of public space: beyond invented streets and reinvented places, Journal of the American Planning Association , 67, pp. 9-16. Baudrillard, J. (1981) For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Benjamin, W. (1999) The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Boghosian, H. (2004) The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent: A National Lawyers Guild Report on Government Violations of First Amendment Rights in the United States. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press. Brenner, N. and Theodore, N. (Eds) (2002) Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Briffault, R. (1999) A government for our time? Business improvement districts and urban governance, Columbia Law Review, 99, pp. 365-476. Brooks, D. (2000) Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. New York: Simon and Schuster. Burlington Free Press (2003) Thousands jam streets for glimpse of history, 24 June ( http:// www.burlingtonfreepress.com/specialnews/ dean/4.htm; accessed 1 December 2004). Burlington Panhandling Ordinance (2004) (available at http://www.churchstmarketplace. com/; accessed 1 December 2004). Burlington, Vermont, City Charter (2005) Available at City Clerk's Office. City Hall, 149 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401. Campoli, J., Hums Tone, E. and Maclean, A. (2001) Above and beyond, Planning, 67, pp. 4-9. Church Street Marketplace (2004a) History (http://www.churchstmarketplace.com/history. html; accessed 1 December 2004). Church Street Marketplace (2004b) Awards (http://www.churchstmarketplace.com/accolades.html ; accessed 1 December 2004). Church Street Marketplace (2004c) Mission statement (http://www.churchstmarketplace. com/vision.html; accessed 1 December 2004). Church Street Marketplace (2004d) Guidelines (http://www.churchstmarketplace.com/; accessed 1 December 2004). Clough, N.L. and Vanderbeck, R.M. (2006) Challenging 'neoliberal publicity' in a business improvement district. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers , Chicago, March. 2283 Cohen, L. (2003) A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Cooper, D. (1998) Regard between strangers: diversity, equality, and the reconstruction of public space, Critical Social Policy , 18(4), pp. 465-492. Davis, M. (1992) Fortress Los Angeles: the militarization of urban space, in: M. Sorkin (Ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space , pp. 154-180. New York: Hill and Wang. Deusen Van, R. (2002) Public space design as class warfare: urban design, the 'right to the city' and the production of Clinton Square, Syracuse, NY , GeoJournal, 58, pp. 149-158. Francoviglia, R. (1996) Main Street Revisited. Iowa City, IW: University of Iowa Press. Gallagher, T. (1995) Trespasser on Main Street (you), The Nation, 261, pp. 787-789. Goheen, P. (1998) Public space and the geography of the modern city , Progress in Human Geography, 22, pp. 479-496. Goss, J. (1993) 'The magic of the mall': an analysis of form, function, and meaning in the contemporary retail built environment, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83, pp. 18-47. Goss, J. (1996) Disquiet on the waterfront: reflections on nostalgia and utopia in the urban archetypes of festival marketplaces, Urban Geography, 17, pp. 221-247. Goss, J. (1999) Once upon a time in the commodity world: unofficial guide to the MOA, Annals of the Association of American Geographers , 89, pp. 45-75. Gottdiener, M. (1997) The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces. Boulder, CO: Westview Press . Guma, G. (1989) The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. Shelburne, VT: New England Press. Habermas, J. (1991) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Held, D. (1980) Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hochleutner, B. (2003) BID's fare well: the democratic accountability of business improvement districts, NYU Law Review, 78, pp. 374-404. Houston, L. (2004) Capitalist tool, Planning, 70, pp. 26-29. Hoyt, L.M. (2003) The business improvement district: an internationally diffused approach to revitalization (http://web.mit.edu/ 11.204/ www/webportfolio/BID/BID_Intl_BID_Project. html; accessed 1 December 2005). Hoyt, L.M. (2004) Collecting private funds for safer public spaces: an empirical examination of the business improvement district concept, Environment and Planning B, 31, pp. 367-380. Jackson, P., Lowe, M. and Miller, D. (Eds) (2000) Commercial Cultures: Economies, Practices, Spaces. New York: Berg. Lees, L.H. (1994) Urban public space and imagined communities in the 1980s and 1990s, Journal of Urban History, 20, pp. 433-465. Lefebvre, H. (1996) Writings on Cities. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Levy, P. (2001) Making downtowns competitive, Planning, 67, pp. 16-19. MacCloud, G., Raco, M. and Ward, K. (2003) Negotiating the contemporary city: introduction , Urban Studies, 40, pp. 1655-1670. Mallet, W. (1994) Managing the post-industrial city: business improvement districts in the United States, Area, 26, pp. 276-287. McFarlane, A. (2004) Preserving community in the city: special improvement districts and the privatization of urban racialized space, Stanford Agora, 4 (available at: http://agora.stanford.edu/agora/volume4/mcfarlane.shtml ; last accessed March 2006). Mitchell, D. (1995) The end of public space? Peoples park, definitions of the public, and democracy, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 85, pp. 108-133. Mitchell, D. (2003) The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: The Guilford Press. Mitchell, D. (2004) The liberalization of free speech: or, how protest in public space is silenced, The Stanford Agora, 4 (available at: http://agora.stanford.edu/agora/volume4/ mitchell.shtml; last accessed March 2006). Moe, R. and Wilkie, C. (1997) Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl. New York: Owl Books. Purcell, M. (2002) Excavating Lefebvre: the right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant, GeoJournal, 58, pp. 99-108. Redlich, A. (2005) The rush to dine outside, The Burlington Free Press, 11 July (www. burlingtonfreepress.com ; accessed 25 August 2005). Ruddick, S. (1996) Constructing difference in public spaces: race, class, and gender as interlocking systems, Urban Geography , 17, pp. 132-151. Sennett, R. (1976) The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism. New York: Vintage Books. Smith, N. (1992) New city, new frontier: the lower east side as wild, wild west, in: M. Sorkin (Ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, pp. 61-93. New York: Hill and Wang. 2284 Sorkin, M. (Ed.) (1992) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. New York: Hill and Wang. Staeheli, L. and Dowler, L. (2002) Introduction, GeoJournal, 58, pp. 73-75. Vanderbeck, R.M. and JohnsonJR, J.H. (2000) 'That's the only place where you can hang out': urban young people and the space of the mall, Urban Geography , 21, pp. 5-25. Walker, J. (2003) Beyond public and private, Reason , 17, pp. 16-17. Workman, C. (2002) Man on the street. Vermont Business People (http://www.vermontguides.com/2002/12-dec/redmond.html ; accessed 20 June 2004). Zukin, S. (1995) The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.</meta-value>
</custom-meta>
</custom-meta-wrap>
</article-meta>
</front>
<back><notes> 
         <p><list list-type="order"> 
               <list-item><p>1. 'Bobos' is a shorthand expression that Brooks uses for 'bourgeois bohemians'.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>2. We recognise that many seemingly everyday activities can in fact be considered political, from the consumption choices that people make to the subtle ways in which they transgress dominant norms of behaviour in public space (for example, young people skateboarding on city streets or same-sex couples holding hands in public). However, for our purposes here we focus on intentional efforts to convey political messages or advocate particular issues in an organised way, a surprisingly underresearched topic in the public space literature. This is not to negate the importance of other, everyday kinds of politics.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>3. Here, we wish to signal our awareness of debates about the possibilities and limitations of 'cyberspace' for democratic practice. While a full engagement with this is beyond our scope here, it is our view that, whatever role cyberspace may play in democracy, it cannot fully replace the need for 'real' public space, not least because of the economic barriers to accessing cyberspace and the potential for its censorship.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>4. Current court rulings suggest that the right to free speech and expression does not apply in private consumption spaces such as shopping malls (see Mitchell, 2003, for a discussion).</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>5. Of course, this is a somewhat broad generalisation. As some scholars of consumption emphasise (for example, Jackson et al., 2000, various essays), consumption practices are complex and consumers are not mere dupes who simply passively accept what consumption spaces and retailers offer them. Clearly, not all consumers will find this suspension of rights desirable, or make these substitutions entirely straightforwardly, if at all. Goss' remarks do speak powerfully though, to the tactics of retailers and managers of commercial space who would like consumers unquestioningly to make the substitutions he describes.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>6. During the months of focused participant observation, the only tablers whom we saw on the Marketplace who would popularly be construed as 'conservative' were a Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor and a few evangelical Christian groups distributing Bibles. An e-mail to the University of Vermont College Republicans enquiring as to why they did not make use of the Marketplace (unlike their Democratic counterparts) indicated that the group opposed doing this because as "the political party oriented towards increasing business" they did not want to do anything which could impede people's shopping practices.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>7. At the time, both authors lived in proximity to the Marketplace and were regularly able to observe what went on there.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>8. Space considerations prevent us from engaging in a full discussion of activists' practices of resistance to Marketplace regulation, but see Clough and Vanderbeck (2006).</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>9. After a nearby show during the mid 1990s, fans of the band Phish (an act that attracts audiences of tens of thousands of revellers to multiday, outdoor concerts) converged on the city and commenced to occupy the Marketplace for several days (including lying down on the pedestrianised street) to the apparent annoyance and disgust of local merchants.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>10. We use this phrase to include Marketplace Commissioners and employees, elected officials and the police with a recognition that there were also sometimes differences of opinion and differing agendas, despite the significant ways these groups do work in concert.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>11. One group which advocates Palestinian independence reported being strongly pressured by the Marketplace not to hold controversial signs during their vigils.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>12. It should be noted that the director of the Marketplace argues that AAV failed to mention that they would be lying down on the street and that this represented a significant misrepresentation of the nature of the demonstration (Marketplace director, e-mail, 4 November 2004). Whether there was any misrepresentation by the employee or a misunderstanding as to what constitutes a 'die-in' is irresolvable and not essential to the argument here.</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>13. In response to a query, the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union makes the following comments on the Marketplace's tactics in relation to AIDS Action VT</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>If payment amounts [for protests/demonstrations] are based on the content of the speech, the city is violating citizens' first amendment right ... If the fee is only required of certain groups, and certainly if the fee was added on as an afterthought once the city became upset with the group's 'die-in' static demonstration, the city's permit scheme is not content-neutral, nor does it contain 'specific and narrowly defined standards' which the National Lawyers Guild claims all ordinances must have (personal e-mail, 17 November 2004).</p>
</list-item> 
               <list-item><p>14. One socialist activist we interviewed, who had lived in Burlington but relocated to Oklahoma City, drove this point home, emphasising that there was almost no space in Oklahoma City to have exchanges with people in public such as she and her comrades had had on Church Street.</p>
</list-item> 
            </list>
</p> 
      </notes>
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<mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Managing Politics and Consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The Geographies of Political Activism on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace</title>
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<name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Nathan L.</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Clough</namePart>
<affiliation>Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, 414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA,</affiliation>
<affiliation>E-mail: clou0062@umn.edu</affiliation>
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<name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Robert M.</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Vanderbeck</namePart>
<affiliation>School of Geography, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK,</affiliation>
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<abstract lang="en">Business improvement districts (BIDs), which are formed when spaces that are legally public are put under private or semi-private forms of administration, have become increasingly prominent features of many cities internationally. This paper provides an in-depth, empirically grounded analysis of the practices of political activism and issue advocacy in one widely admired BID (Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, Vermont) in light of recent theoretical concerns about the decline of 'public' space within the current neo-liberal context of privatisation. The paper examines the ways in which various kinds of political activity are constructed by Marketplace management as either assets or liabilities, and how different forms of activism are differentially regulated and policed in pursuit of maintaining the carefully themed environment of the BID. The research raises important questions about the extent to which downtown (and other) spaces that have been (re)organised as BIDs can fulfil the role of public space in democratic societies.</abstract>
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Managing Politics and Consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The Geographies of Political Activism on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace

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