by Bailey Shelton | photos courtesy of the City of Carmel, Bjarke Ingels Group, and Rundell Ernstberger Associates
CARMEL MIDTOWN’S MULTIYEAR PROJECT BRINGS A LOCAL INTERPRETATION OF A GLOBAL TREND TOWARD DIVERSE PUBLIC THOROUGHFARES
In downtown Carmel, a greenway project ten years in the making now sparks a sense of community where there once was a simple strip of pavement cutting through the overgrown backyard of factories and farmland.
With its third and final phase nearing completion, and two more connecting bikeways in proposal stages with the City of Carmel, it’s hard to believe that the section of the Monon Greenway stretching through Carmel Midtown went through two rounds of rejected proposals before getting off the ground. But then-Mayor Jim Brainard had a specific vision in mind—one where the trail could become more than a trail.
DESIGNING THE GREENWAY
The ultimate design began with city planner and bestselling author Jeff Speck, one of the leaders of the New Urbanism movement. In his tenure as the director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts in the early 2000s, he oversaw the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, where he met with hundreds of mayors across the United States to discuss the pain points facing their cities. For Speck, the walkable city (coincidentally the name of his book) is both a matter of public health and a building block of a thriving community. Carmel’s former Mayor Brainard tended to agree.
“I probably met him for the first time around 2008, ” says Speck. “He was already the roundabout king; he was already doing great things there. He presented me with a challenge… The downtown was in two parts and ne’er the twain shall meet.”
As Speck pointed out, the trail connecting Carmel’s Arts District and Carmel Midtown wasn’t used for anything other than exercise for the better part of the early 2000s. The brief for the Monon Greenway was a simple one: Transform an underutilized, overgrown section of Carmel Midtown into a space where people want to spend their time.
“Unlike the prior two plans, which respected the trail as a nature trail, I decided to frame it as an avenue. That was a very controversial idea,” says Speck. “It was hard for people to imagine how a street could make it nicer, but I knew from my experience that turning the trail from 10 feet of asphalt that passed through industrial noman’s-land into the centerpiece of a traditionally designed avenue could create a tremendous, multimodal, lively corridor.”
After the initial concept stage, the project became a collaborative effort with two other firms. Copenhagen-based international firm Gehl worked on the concept design and analysis, consulting on how this project would exist within the community. Indianapolis-based Rundell Ernstberger Associates (REA) then finalized the design and oversaw construction.
“I should say, the details now are vastly superior to what I drew up in the original design thanks to subsequent designers,” says Speck.
After conducting a public life survey surrounding the use of the trail and several other streets, Gehl ultimately recommended that the plan include buffered bike lanes and ample pedestrian spaces, which eventually became art installations and activities like table tennis and sport courts, complete with a green that becomes an outdoor cinema in the warmer months.
“We do this kind of ethnographic data collection on how people use space, and that became the basis of the designs that we did,” says Blaine Merker, senior project director and head of climate at Gehl. They’ve performed similar surveys and recommendations across the country and internationally, from a manufacturing campus in Illinois and transportation projects in Boise, to major projects in cities like Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, and beyond.
The beauty of this section of the Monon is in what its creative multi-functionality means for surrounding areas. In a state where, for better or worse, car culture is part of everyday life, communities like Carmel are coming around on the concept of greenways and walkable downtowns.
WALKABILITY AS A GLOBAL TREND
We’re nearly 15 years on from Speck’s original call to build pedestrian-friendly communities. Speck says in his book, Walkable City, and reiterates to anyone who asks, that although trails often come under fire in the court of public opinion, they also tend to raise property values and improve public health.
“I think we’ve certainly seen how trails make an area more successful, improve property values, and improve quality of life,” says Speck, adding examples from Utah, Arizona, and Boulder, Colorado, to the mix. “There needs to be more education about the benefit of having a trail near your home. It adds as much property value as having an extra bedroom.”
Advocates in Indiana are seeing that difference in real time. Although Carmel came to Monon-centered redevelopment early, that thoroughfare stretches for over 27 miles, and many of the corridors in downtown Indianapolis are noticing the difference. Properties along the Monon through Broad Ripple and Indy’s near east side see higher property values than comps without a neighboring trail. Health by Design’s Communications and Policy Leader Andrea Watts says there’s a shift in values for younger residents that is leading the charge of pedestrian centered design.
“These projects aren’t just nice-to-haves, they’re really essential for growing, competitive regions,” says Watts. “But there is a bit of a cultural mindset shift… we’ve seen a battle of perception with neighborhoods opposing bike lanes, accusing advocates of creating a sort of war on cars.”
This pushback is one familiar to Merker. He says that some of the most passionate projects Gehl consults on are in smaller U.S. cities, especially when they’re experiencing population growth or aging infrastructure. But the same concerns are present in communities around the country—residents are worried that bike lanes will cut in on parking and potentially congest traffic in their downtowns.
“We can realistically be ambitious in the American context and bring some big ideas in, but it is the United States, and we do have different expectations here in terms of parking and street widths,” says Merker. “The value of being an outsider firm in small towns is that you can come in and say things that maybe someone might not be offended at hearing. Through this different perspective you can hold the mirror up and make some obvious observations that maybe wouldn’t have made it into the conversation.”
Merker compared the Carmel Midtown project to Superkilen, a park and greenway in Copenhagen where a transit thoroughfare became a hub of neighborhood oriented design. Similar to the Monon Greenway, activity stations and outdoor seating gave Copenhagen residents reason to spend more time out in the community beyond going from point A to point B.
“That’s certainly been an important part of our practice, to really test these ideas in more small to midsized American cities. These are often places that really have a strong interest in creating a high quality of life and understand the value of being able to get out and know your neighbor.”
But part of the uniqueness in the Carmel Midtown project came in the addition of traffic lanes and parking. Generally multimodal thoroughfares are designed the other way around. It’s an ironic state of affairs that in Carmel, adding cars actually improved foot traffic.
Watts says, “With really any major bus line, we advocate for something called Transit-Oriented Development. It’s about building housing, retail, and public spaces that connect to other transit networks. You’ll see increased foot traffic, and more vibrant neighborhoods when these places are treated as economic and social assets.”
One of Health by Design’s core tenets in their Indiana-based advocacy is that the choices people make are driven by the choices they have. The Carmel Midtown corridor of the Monon shows what can happen when pedestrians are presented with more choices. In one block, they can walk, cycle, ride, visit a brewery, see a movie, play table tennis, and the list goes on.
“What was needed was cars, but cars moving very slowly,” says Speck. This drove his choice to make the roads along the Monon narrow and brick. “I knew it wouldn’t be a successful mixed use corridor if it didn’t have fronts facing it, and it wouldn’t have fronts facing it if there weren’t cars.”
Although walkable cities are increasingly part of the conversation, the pushback comes from the statehouse as well as residents with parking concerns. Watts from Health by Design points to a recent proposal for a WaWa gas station to go in along the proposed Indianapolis Blue Line. Health by Design advocated against the proposal because of concerns for pedestrian safety heading to a nearby bus stop. Ultimately, the proposal went through as planned, and the Washington Street WaWa is set to open in early 2027, a full year before the Blue Line will begin operation. However, the statewide push for pedestrian-friendly corridors continues.
“In every corner of the state people are doing this work… when you make it convenient for everybody, Indiana could be a lot healthier,” says Watts. “The state loves to talk about talent attraction and avoiding brain drain but I will say in this administration we have cut the next level trail funding, so communities are sort of having to get really creative in how they finish projects or seek funding for this kind of development.”
That said, multimodal transit is expecting some regional wins in Central Indiana, with other Indianapolis suburbs prioritizing greenways and pedestrian-centered design in their city development plans. Fort Wayne’s downtown corridor is one example, with trails and waterways connecting to downtown business centers. REA, the same Indianapolis firm that oversaw the Carmel Midtown project, has also consulted with Greenfield on their roadmap to 2055, where walkability and connected communities are one of the big ideas for the next 25 years of development—a shift in perspective that no one could have predicted for Greenfield a decade ago.
In all likelihood, Carmel Midtown may be an early adopter of a style of city development that we’ll be seeing more of in the next 25 years. In the meantime, the key opponents to multimodal transport have made themselves known. Only time will tell who will win out in the end.
