Remaking America’s medical districts: a challenge for NU

New Urban News Article with images and sidebar, 10/1/2006

Proposals in Miami and Memphis suggest hospitals and health institutions could be focal points for walkable, mixed-use districts.

It’s hard to think of any city in the US that has made its medical district a place where people really want to be. Even though medicine and health care are the nation’s biggest growth industry, accounting for 16 percent of America’s gross domestic product, and even though 1.7 million jobs have been created in this field since 2001 — more than in any other sector of the US economy — there have been few efforts to capitalize on the urban design potential of hospitals and health-related institutions.

That may finally be starting to change. In Miami and Memphis, planners, designers, and local institutions are looking at turning medical areas into congenial, pedestrian-friendly mixed-use districts — places where people of varied income levels would be comfortable living and spending leisure time.

This incipient trend could give cities some dynamic, job-rich neighborhoods that would attract people from throughout the metropolitan region. The strategy borrows from efforts that universities — most notably the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia — have undertaken in recent years, upgrading the urbanistic qualities of areas surrounding their campuses.