My hometown of Carmel, Indiana, was recently ranked by Money Magazine as the #1 small city to live. We can learn a lot from Carmel’s jump to the top of the list. Yet Carmel also highlights a lot of the challenges that city planners face.
Nearly all of the touted benefits of Carmel result at least partially from city planning or some other form of collective action, spearheaded by some division of the local government. Realtor Patty Bender of Century 21 Scheetz says that the schools top her list of reasons to love Carmel. Journalist Dan McFeely notes that what really sets Carmel apart is the way that it has “aggressively pumped life into a struggling downtown.” He also notes the aggression in dealing with traffic congestion through roundabouts and bike- and pedestrian-friendly travel options.
Money Magazine’s top reasons, in addition to those above, included the Palladium (The Center for the Performing Arts), the Monon Center (“a big sports and recreation center”), and added employment opportunities. All of these were the result of government planning and government investment. In fact, both the reconstruction of Keystone Parkway and the Palladium have been highly criticized for being completed under false pretenses, sold including a budget that the planners knew was a significant under-estimation. And all this done with low taxes, another of the listed benefits inMoney Magazine’s analysis.
The advantage Carmel offers is its significant tax base: a median income of over $100,000. That advantage goes back to the history of city abandonment and white flight. My dad has repeatedly told me that he was very hesitant to move to Carmel when my sister was born and my parents decided that we needed more than a two-bedroom house for three children. He grew up in the Indianapolis area and has distinct memories of Carmel booming as white families escaped Indianapolis because of the integration of the school systems. Carmel remains 85% white and only 3% African-American.
The United States federal government facilitated this escape and well as the deterioration of urban cores with its loan backing program through the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). White families were given loans by banks because the FHA would back them. They wouldn’t back loans given to minority families or families who wanted to move to or make home improvements in areas where minority families lived – those where considered declining neighborhoods. This allowed white families to create wealth and move it to the suburbs and left cities struggling with a depleted tax base, declining and abandoned properties, and an aging infrastructure. And left nearly all non-white families to deal with these challenges. (Note that there is no room in this analysis for blame; it’s simply important to understand the reasons things are the way they are now.)
Suburbs have also wreaked extensive ecological damage through the necessary reliance of residents on automobiles and fossil fuels. Indianapolis itself, as a city founded on the automobile and the interstate highway system, is pretty spread out. Carmel (along with other Indianapolis suburbs) is far worse. Yes, this space offers many aesthetic advantages, and even financial advantages of lower property values. That’s why suburbs became so popular. Yet that popularity has come at an unexpected cost, both internal in the rising cost of transportation due to the rising cost of fuel, and external through greenhouse gas emissions and storm water runoff from paved areas and the resulting reduced aquifer replenishment.
Thus, Carmel presents the biggest challenge facing urban planners. We know that compact urban areas offer many ecological advantages in reducing damage to the environment – from multi-unit dwellings that reduce heating and cooling costs to reduced need for automobile transportation. We also know that humans have an innate need for contact with nature (what Richard Louv calls “biophilia”), which suburbs facilitate in some ways. How can we learn from Carmel’s ability to attract residents and create urban cores that offer similar attractions while also addressing some of the shortcomings of suburbs – lack of diversity, ecological problems, sedentary transportation? What sort of commitment will it require from local cities, including the taxpayers? It has paid off for Carmel – so it seems. Will others make that same investment?
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