The Business Ethic and the Ethic of Care: Business Improvement Associations, Emergency Shelters and the Hybridity of Urban Governance in Action

Business Improvement Associations (BIAs) – also referred to as Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) – and emergency shelters are two important entities in the hybridity of urban governance and order, even though, facially, this might not appear to be so, especially given the fundamentally different nature of the ethic of each: between protecting and enhancing business (and, to some extent, community and residential) interests related to profit and property values (BIAs) and serving the wellbeing of marginalized persons, such as the visibly poor or homeless (emergency shelters). This paper reads the ethics of BIAs alongside and against that of emergency shelters to claim that while the interests, values, and rationales of each are profoundly and fundamentally different, one premised upon a business ethic (BIAs) and the other on an ethic of care (emergency shelters), each ends up being severely oppressive to marginalized persons whether by intention or implication of their very being. As such, the article examines the way different forms of governance come together in the current urban landscape and helps shed light upon some of the workings of the hybridity of urban governance.