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Cities that make the right moves are the ones that will differentiate themselves and perform over the longer term.

"It was late one weekday afternoon in Fishers, an affluent Indianapolis suburb with a lot of offices and retail as well as houses, and the traffic was starting to get irritating. There were long waits at lights. At one intersection, the line of cars waiting to turn left blocked the main traffic lane.

Then I crossed over into Carmel, another affluent suburb with lots of offices and retail as well as houses, and everything changed. Instead of traffic lights, there was roundabout after roundabout after roundabout. There also weren’t any long waits or backups at intersections. I can’t say that I breezed through all of the roundabouts — the signage at the bigger ones was a little confusing for a first-timer — but all the other drivers seemed to know what they were doing. Traffic flowed, but it didn’t flow too fast. When a couple of pedestrians showed up at one roundabout, cars had no trouble stopping for them."

Carmel has more roundabouts than any other city in the United States, around 120 I believe. Fishers has 15 according to their web site. I’m not going to say that roundabouts are the ultimate in infrastructure, but clearly Carmel has invested heavily in its streets compared to Fishers and it shows, even to an out of town reporter from New York.

by Aaron M. Renn

https://www.newgeography.com/content/006106-the-communities-changing-now

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