Carmel has proven it.
Now neighboring cities are following suit with same results see Zionsville, Westfield, Noblesville and Fishers for other examples with results that are tracking right along with Carmel (although 10-15 years behind).
It's really not that interesting of a development model to me. These places exist in nearly every midtier NFL city I've been to - one suburb/exurb that is exceedingly exclusive and everyone knows as the "fancy area" of town. One existed where I grew up, and they were ruthless in their "not investing in poverty" stances. What I remember them most for is blocking many public transit projects from moving forward since it would bring the wrong type of folks through their part of town. That single community caused more hardship and pain than any other for the entire metro area, and that will be their legacy to me.
Basically these communities can only exist as minority communities as the model of "only cater to rich people" is simply not sustainable at a wider scale.
Yes, fixing only the easy problems seems like a practical way to go if I were a mayor of a random midwest exurb. It certainly isn't doing a good job or doing anything interesting for humanity though - it's simply doing the obvious most directly actionable thing you could do: make the undesirables someone else's problem.
People have been saying this about Carmel since the mid 1990s.
What is going on is sustainable as long as long-term economic growth is positive. Growth is the key... along with making sure that incentives and bond maturity are managed correctly.
edit: To be fair, Carmel is mostly middle class.
And found:
> Median household income in Carmel, IN is $132,859.
Another search shows:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/205609/median-household-...
San Francisco and San Jose have roughly the same household median income. Those cities are definitely upper middle class by US standards as a whole.
All said, I still greatly value your posts on this topic. It seems like you are someone with first hand knowledge of this transformation. Thanks for taking the time to post about it. HN is better for it!
From what I could find online, it's at about the 77th percentile for the U.S., so bordering on upper class (usually defined as the top quintile). Since the median household income for Indiana is slightly lower than the national median, it's probably safe to say it's upper class for Indiana.
The blog post says:
> A city-run water utility with lower rates and no drought restrictions.
Searching "infinite growth model" can help understand some of the problems with that assumption.
Any semi-competent government should be able to improve short term results with a debt binge.
But if Carmel can get long term results that are financially sustainable - because their investments justify debt cost - they've really demonstrated their model works.
I’m a fiscal conservative.
My bar for ‘prove it out’ is a lot higher than the liberal or Jesus conservative bar for ‘prove it out’. My bar includes retiring the debt. Which has not happened. And if history is any indication, it’s not likely to happen either.
But again, I’ll go ahead and wish them luck on paying that back. If they can do that, good on them. Pretty sure it won’t happen though.
If they don’t get the surplus to payback bonds at maturity, are they just going to issue more bonds and keep this going perpetually? I am really curious about the bonds/debt driven development
Now consider, Darien's per capita debt load works out to about 2% of the average annual per capita income. Carmel's per capita debt load works out to roughly 25-30% of its average annual per capita income.
Look, I have nothing against small places in the midwest. I'm from small town Wisconsin. So I have just as big an affinity for flyover country as anyone else. But few of the fiscal indicators are pointing in the right direction here, and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmel,_Indiana#/media/File:Ra...