[Ep. 1025] The city of Carmel, Indiana, is exceptionally people- and cycling-friendly, defying stereotypes for a Midwestern conservative-led small city. Even though it is also still quite car centric, its streetscapes do demonstrate that building livable cities can transcend political divides.
But how does Carmel fare in my Dutch eyes? I travelled from the Netherlands to Indiana to experience cycling in Carmel firsthand.
My generous host Mr. “American Fietser” has his own YouTube channel, featuring live-streamed rides from Carmel (among other topics). Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanFietser
More information in the blog post: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/?p=25575
24 Comments
I was thrilled to run into you at the Carmel Library while you were visiting. Wonderful video and perspective on the area my family and I have chosen to call home. Thanks to you, your partner, and @AmericanFietser for spending a few minutes talking to my son and I. I hope you enjoyed your travels to Indiana!
Wow, this city looks so extremely far ahead of the usual US or Canadian city – especially from the aspect of mixed use and density.
We see in this video several examples of why many so-called bike paths don't work for a lot of cyclists — they become overwhelmed by people on foot going slowly and taking up the entire lane. Add earbuds to that, and you have a situation that's untenable for all but very slow cyclists. The regular streets are often a better option.
I'm actually quite happy to see North American cycling and walking infrastructure done properly, of course with some improvements needed.
But the effort is absolutely substantial!.
Indiana is definitely taking this effort at heart..
Hopefully we made a good impression on you. We've lived here for almost 20 years and have seen significant (good) change in the Carmel/Westfield area. When we moved here, you had to stop along the Monon trail at each and every street- which is fun prohibative. And, the areas that Brandon features weren't even here then. Thanks for making the video and safe travels.
Interesting video-title!
Initially I understood it as viewing the USA's state of Indiana from a Dutch perspective via bicycling in a town called Carmel (that is located in the USA's state of California, so far as I knew). A few re-reads were required for the USA-er's penchant for writing "town , state" to come to the surface, thus giving the sentence a totally different meaning. Oh well… US-English is NOT like UK-English…
Anyway, for me a very significant difference between the Dutch view of traffic versus that of many other countries is the wide-openness of pathways for bicycles & pedestrians versus the restrictively-designed pathways for cars (literal & visual narrowing by trees right-beside the asphalt). In areas where people abound, the car is in NO way the "king", but a GUEST.
i honestly believe the political divide in the US will be closed by a mutual love of human-first urban development
If only the rest of the US would follow this example, rather than the opposite. That would send a great signal to the rest of the world even, where car centricism prevails.
A quiet, people-centric city in a red state, I can only dream of something like that in Texas.
And a Republican (mostly) did this! This goes to show how much potential the US and even the Republican party has, if they wanted to at least.
I wonder whether the initial plans met fierce restitance. I suppose that the population of Carmel (shopowners included) was initially just as car centric as the population of any other American town. And, if so, how did the mayor overcome this resistance?
It's kind of wild how they put so much effort into their urbanism and road design, yet don't run a bus system in this pretty large city with more surrounding smaller towns. I was looking into the realities of moving here without a car and still looks decent if you don't mind biking long distances. It's 7-10 miles down the Monon Trail before you encounter a bus in the Indianapolis metro area. You can even bike 25 miles to downtown Indianapolis on the trail.
The hope of US city planning. Good to see there are republicans left with common sense and DOING things to improve. Be the beacon for the US city planning the next century. You deserve it!
My eyes see quite a few people cycling and my brain can not believe this is supposed to be in the US. Wow. Thank you for showing that good developments like this are indeed possible in the US.
Carmel looks terrific. Bravo.
👏🏼👏🏼😍🤩🤩🚲🚲 nice
Well done Carmel! Well done to the mayor and everybody else involved who has been helping, in one way or another, this transformation. 🎉
It looks like Carmel is a new city with lots of areas redeveloping with new streets, roads, buildings etc. Not every city has that luxury. Let's look at Google Maps. Oh. Deceived again. This is only a small part of Carmel. Maybe a few places beyond the Monom Trail, but otherwise, still a typical suburb but with lots of roundabouts. Oh, and freeways run through and around the city too, so that will give urbanists nightmares. LOL.
If you want more details check the blog (the link is in the description 📦). You'll find great stuff like the fact that at the first round about the population was at just 25,000people. The good development must have made a good impression on people who decided to move there. Again, my compliments to the mayor 💜
'Creating a livable city doesn't have to be political'. It is really sad that the word politics is so badly misunderstood that people think it is all about tribalism and partisanship. The reality is that politics IS about how to create a city. How people get together as a society and decide how they want to live IS politics.
Should be called Bikemel.
Wow!
From Colorado where some of this is just normal infrastructure, I am so impressed with Carmel! What a beautiful area! Great job
Holly God, is this really the USA? Amazing city!