Book featured on Meeting of the Minds website

Check out an article written by the Small Business and the City authors on the Meeting of the Minds site

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Online reaction to the book

getabstract Review

"Suburban shopping malls and “big-box” stores often cause vacancies in commercial buildings in downtowns and Main Street shopping districts. Now, a movement that originated in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is countering the shift away from downtown clusters and to suburban malls. “Business Improvement Associations” (BIAs) collect a tax from their urban neighborhood’s commercial property owners to improve their areas and boost their business prospects – without direct government aid. Rafael Gomez, a professor, Andre Isakov, a park designer, and Matthew Semansky, a journalist, explain a study of urban development and decline in Canada. They emphasize the way that local businesses can respond to the threat of big suburban retail centers that deplete downtowns. They show how governments can make their jurisdictions friendlier to small businesses with the right zoning rules and support of good schools and mass transit. The authors’ conclusions apply to all modern cities around the world. getAbstract recommends their insights to business owners large and small, city planners, zoning boards, investors, entrepreneurs and citizens who are interested in preserving their neighborhoods’ “sense of place.”"

link to full article

Strong Towns mention

".....I cracked open a book today called Small Business in the City which so far has focused heavily on the role Business Improvement Areas can play in both a neighbourhood's sense of place and physical improvements to infrastructure. The book recounts histories and anecdotes surrounding the creation of vibrant small business districts. It always seems to start with one person, like the mainstreet shop owner who wants to draw back visitors from the competitive lure of big box land. These heroes of small business sound like they live thoroughly exhausting lives, but they transform their cities time and again.

It has made me wonder... Working with small business owners has taught me more about Strong Towns than anything I could have studied. How many of our ranks in the Strong Towns community are small business owners themselves? It seems like they do quite a lot of the heavy lifting to revive a place or at least have the potential to. I'd be interested to know who among us run businesses with a physical presence downtown."

link to full article

Academic Reaction

“A most useful book, especially for the city planner, urban geographer, and anyone who cares about the future of cities.  Relevant case analyses are embedded in a coherent structure that provides practical examples of past successes and failures as well as sensible policy recommendations for the future.  Highly recommended.”

David K. Foot, Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, University of Toronto, and author of 'Boom, Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift'

“Small Business and the City is a plea for a ‘small is beautiful’ approach to business, urban scale, and public sector decision-making. Gomez, Isakov, and Semansky’s evocative descriptions of Business Improvement Areas teach far more about BIAs, their operations, and the thinking of their members than do tables of statistics on these organizations.”

Pierre Filion, Professor, School of Planning, University of Waterloo

“Each atomistic transaction between a small business and a customer provides the flare for a rich economic eruption, encompassing spillovers and interactions with other firms, citizens, and the built environment. This book offers a bold explanation of how cities can succeed by nurturing and harnessing these powerful interactions to create dynamic communities and growing economies.”

Kevin Milligan, Associate Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia