Cities Are Designed for People. Healthcare? Not So Much.
Cities and healthcare systems are, in theory, built for the same purpose: to support human life. But, in practice, both often seem better at managing problems than nurturing people. Cities fight congestion, housing shortages, and crumbling infrastructure. Healthcare systems wrestle with rising costs, fragmented care, and burned-out staff. The design response is often reactive: patch, fix, optimize, repeat.
What if we stopped pretending like we don’t have a clear crisis on our hands and started designing from a different question: what does a system that truly supports people look like?
If you’ve ever wandered through a thoughtfully designed city, like one with shade trees, public seating, good transit, and a sense of rhythm, you know what it feels like when a system is built around how people actually live. And, if you’ve ever tried navigating a healthcare system while sick, confused, or scared, you know what it feels like when design forgets you exist.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Designing for Life, Not Just Function
Let’s start with a simple truth: Yes, both cities and healthcare systems are about infrastructure, but they’re also about experience. We remember cities by how they make us feel. The charm of a walkable street, the stress of a crowded intersection, the relief of a well-placed bench. And yet, so much of healthcare still feels like a factory: cold lighting, confusing forms, endless waiting rooms, lack of privacy. It functions (on good days), but it rarely feels human.
Imagine if your first point of care felt more like a neighborhood café than a DMV. What if a waiting room offered warm lighting, clear signage, and a layout that didn’t trigger PTSD? What if discharge instructions were written like a friend explaining what to do instead of a liability document disguised as patient education?
This isn’t fluff. It’s not decoration. Design choices—how space is arranged, how information is delivered, how people are greeted—shape whether someone feels safe, heard, or completely overwhelmed.
Cities have started to get this. There’s a growing movement around urban humanism: designing environments not just to move people efficiently, but to help them thrive. Healthcare needs to borrow the blueprint.
From Reactive to Regenerative
Most of us know from personal experience that much of healthcare is built for “the aftermath.” It’s a system that waits until something goes wrong…then tries to fix it. It’s heroic in crisis, but slow and uneven when it comes to prevention, care coordination, and community well-being. (While things are slightly better post-COVID, there is still work to do to transform healthcare into a system that actually supports care.)
The process of designing cities used to be similar. We’d widen highways instead of asking why so many people had to drive. We’d build flood walls instead of questioning how zoning contributed to risk. But, increasingly, urban design is shifting toward regenerative systems and solutions that restore and sustain, rather than just delay the next breakdown.
So, if we take a cross-pollination approach and apply lessons from city design to healthcare, the question becomes: what would regenerative healthcare look like?
Clinics embedded in communities, not dropped on the outskirts
Long-term relationships with care teams, not five-minute visits with rotating strangers
Environmental and social drivers of health treated as core infrastructure—not afterthoughts
Technology that supports early detection and continuity, not just documentation and billing
Designing regenerative systems means asking: What keeps people well? Not just: How do we fix them when they’re not? It means solving for root causes, not just symptoms. And that requires seeing health as an ecosystem, not a transaction.
Healthcare as a Neighborhood, Not a Maze
Navigating healthcare feels like getting dropped into a city with no map, no signs, and a dozen agencies telling you to go talk to someone else. Getting care shouldn’t feel like surviving a scavenger hunt while sick. But often, that’s exactly what it is. You make a call. You get put on hold. You fill out forms online and again in the waiting room. You try to follow up—but the lab, the specialist, and your insurance provider all live in different universes. You’re the only one holding the thread.
It’s not just inefficient; it’s demoralizing and depressing.
And, in those moments, you’ve probably thought: There has to be a better way. And there is.
Now imagine a neighborhood you love. You know where the bakery is, how to catch the bus, who lives next door. You don’t need a guidebook because the nature of the design makes you feel a sense of belonging. That’s because good cities are designed for orientation. They offer signals, rhythms, and relationships that make navigation intuitive.
Cities learned long ago that navigation matters. That wayfinding isn’t just about signage; it’s about clarity, confidence, and making people feel they belong in a space. Good cities are legible. You understand where you are, how to get where you’re going, and what you’ll find when you arrive.
Healthcare could learn a lot from that. Instead of a maze, what if healthcare felt like a neighborhood where people know your name, services are nearby, and pathways are intuitive? What if you didn’t have to retell your story at every visit? What if care teams followed you across settings like neighbors, not strangers? What if the whole experience actually felt coherent?
It’s not a dream. Some systems are getting close. Community-based care models, patient navigators, and integrated tech platforms are all steps in that direction. But, we need to scale those ideas until seamlessness is standard.
Built for Everyone, Not Just Efficiency
Cities have a history of designing for the privileged and managing everyone else. Healthcare’s track record isn’t much different. From redlined neighborhoods with fewer clinics to medical algorithms biased against Black patients, design choices—whether conscious or not—can reinforce inequality. So if we’re going to borrow the best of city design, we also have to learn from its mistakes. Good urbanism today starts with understanding who has access to public space, who is most impacted by pollution or lack of transit, and whose voices are heard in planning. Good healthcare design must do the same, addressing questions like:
Who can afford to access care easily?
Who feels welcome in a clinical space?
Who gets time with their provider—and who gets rushed?
Who’s building the tools, systems, and experiences that define “good care”?
Inclusive design means involving patients as co-creators and hiring teams that reflect the communities they serve. It means asking who is this really for and being honest about the answer. If we design for the margins, we improve the system for everyone.
If Cities Can Be Joyful, So Can Care
Urban designers now talk about joy. Yes, joy as a legitimate design goal.
That’s why some cities are painting crosswalks in rainbow stripes, turning bus stops into libraries, or hosting outdoor concerts in alleyways. They know people aren’t just rational actors—they’re emotional, social, playful beings. And design that invites delight builds trust, connection, and civic pride.
So…why not healthcare?
Why not moments of delight in a place too often defined by fear and frustration? A warm smile. A piece of art. A soundscape that softens stress. A moment of genuine human connection between patient and provider. Design can’t eliminate suffering. But it can hold space for joy, dignity, and healing, especially in moments when people feel most vulnerable. Ultimately, the question isn’t just what healthcare or cities look like. It’s what they feel like. Do they honor people’s time, intelligence, and humanity? Do they reflect how people actually live, not just how institutions wish they did? Too often, we design around problems instead of people. We chase efficiency at the expense of empathy. We ask: “How do we reduce costs?” before we ask, “What does good care feel like?”
But what if we flipped the script?
What if we treated design as an act of care instead of a cosmetic fix? That’s how the best cities are built. That’s how healthcare should be too.
So What Now?
If you work in healthcare, ask:
Are we designing systems that people can understand and trust?
Are we focused on acute needs and long-term well-being?
Are we solving for operational problems, or designing for human lives?
If you work in city planning or urban design, ask:
Are we designing spaces that keep people well, not just moving?
Are we integrating health into housing, transit, food systems, and public life?
Are we including care infrastructure in how we define “community development”?
If you’re a patient (and we all are, or will be), ask:
Why shouldn’t care feel like care?
Why shouldn’t we expect systems to be intuitive, dignified, and even joyful?
What if we demanded more—not just from providers, but from the systems around them?
We don’t have to accept cities designed around cars, or hospitals designed around billing codes. We can build systems that center people. That anticipate needs. That honor time and context and care. Cities are waking up to this. Healthcare can, too. Design won’t solve everything. But it can make the difference between a system that just keeps running and one that helps us live better. And in the end, isn’t that the point?