When we think about hospitals and healthcare environments, we often associate them with urgency, illness, and stress – places to visit only when we or a loved one are unwell. But what if these spaces could also support wellness, reflection, and healing for all who pass through them, from patients to providers to everyday citizens?
The Longwood Medical and Academic Area is one of Boston’s most economically vital and densely developed districts. Currently 21 million square feet in just 213 acres, it is continuing to grow. Campuses are built out to the property lines accommodating the 100,000+ daily employees, students, and visitors. Longwood requires density to continue thriving, but this also means high greenhouse gas emissions and heightens its vulnerability to climate change. And it lacks access to parklands and open space that provide public health and climate resilience benefits that are also essential to its long-term success.
The Longwood Collective recently led the development of an Open Space Resilience Framework with local public and private agency partners. They will share creative thinking about how to achieve similar benefits to a traditional park in a dense, urban environment where open space is limited and where there are a multitude of owners and management agencies that must collaborate. The framework intends to mitigate heat and flood risks, provide recreation and respite opportunities, and enhance and connect open space infrastructure by improving the district’s tree canopy, constructing bioswales and other green infrastructure for stormwater management, activating plazas for placemaking and community well-being, and adding new open space through large-scale redevelopment projects.
The South Texas Medical Center (STMC) plays a similarly vital role in San Antonio’s health and wellness. This session explores the transformative efforts of the STMC, through a unique and long-standing partnership between the Medical Center Alliance and the City of San Antonio, where the built environment is being reimagined to prioritize community health, connectivity, and quality of life. Presenters will share insights from the South Texas Medical Center Master Plan, an ambitious effort to make the campus more walkable and accessible to the surrounding community. By shifting the focus from cars to people, the plan integrates complete streets, green infrastructure, and improved connections to trails and open space networks, turning the STMC into a vibrant urban destination.
These stories offer a new way of thinking about healthcare campuses, not just as places for treating illness, but as landscapes for living well.
