The 15-Minutes-of-Sleep City

How (and why) to design for a tired world.

On Tuesday mornings I meet a few friends at a local Starbucks at 6AM for a weekly Bible study. For a night owl like me, the early morning wake-up call can be a challenge.

As someone with poor-but-improving sleep hygiene, there will sometimes be Tuesday mornings where it feels like I’ve literally slept 15 minutes. There have been multiple occasions where I opted to stay home simply because it felt unwise and unsafe to drive on such little rest, and several other times where that would probably have been the wise decision.

I share these otherwise-boring details about my life because I’m just one of millions of people who face this challenge each week. In fact, over one third of American adults are sleep-deprived. And that’s a problem in a society where most of us get behind the wheel of a car to get from A to B.

One in 25 drivers reports they’ve fallen asleep at the wheel in the last 30 days. Next time you’re on the road, just think: approximately 4 out of every 100 drivers you pass has fallen asleep at the wheel in the last month.

And unfortunately, that drowsy driving has a predictable but devastating consequence: over 600 deaths were reported to be caused by drowsy driving in 2020. But this figure represents what is likely a significant underrepresentation of the actual total, with the CDC estimating that number could actually be nearly 6,000, or over 16 per day.

It’s not good that we’re so tired. But it’s also not good that we fail to account for our somewhat-inevitable exhaustion in our built environment.

The reality is that our dopamine-driven culture is unlikely to achieve a moment of universal well-restedness anytime soon. Our screens and other cultural norms simply won’t allow for it. But to the degree we can make progress, it’ll come in building places where we can function and flourish even when we’re a little worn out.

Let’s call this approach the “15-Minutes-of-Sleep City” (trademark pending).

Some examples of how to design for exhaustion:

• Places designed for walkability make it easier to obtain morning sun exposure, which can provide energy early in the day and is critical for supporting regular sleep and circadian rhythms.

• Transit access removes the need to get behind the wheel tired or face having to bow out of going to work or other important obligations.

• Mixed-use zoning ensures there’s probably a great coffee shop just downstairs ready to give you the much-needed pick-me-up.

And all of these things also support the kind of healthy habits and lifestyles that make it so we won’t be so tired in the first place.

The 15-Minutes-of-Sleep City, like any good framework for urban design, lowers the barrier to participation in daily life. It requires less of you, and makes it easier to show up even at your worst.

We all have days where the alarm seems to go off before we ever truly fell asleep, but have to give it whatever we have. On those days, we need a built environment that has our back.