Surveys of urban history from ancient times to the present reveal a continuum of collective responses to pandemics ranging from quarantine facilities and monitoring the spread of disease to building new wastewater networks. The contemporary COVID-19 pandemic includes new digital tools and techniques that supplement (and sometimes replace) the existing analogue responses, while raising new ethical issues with respect to privacy. A typology of pandemic responses in cities is created, based on human–building interaction (HBI) principles. This typology can be used to compare and contrast analogue and digital responses relating to distancing, monitoring and sanitising. It provides a summary of a wide range of individual and collective implications of pandemics and demonstrates the indelible connections between pandemics and the built environment. In addition, the typology provides a tool to interpret some of the opportunities and drawbacks of digitalising cities. PRACTICE RELEVANCE The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the enduring co-evolution of cities and disease through history. This study aims to inform future pandemic preparedness by providing a framework for designers, managers and users of public spaces to evaluate the multiple implications of emerging technologies that are integrated within the urban fabric. While the rapid rise of digitalisation to advance urban health agendas continues to raise new questions relating to individual and civic freedoms, HBI qualitatively provides a lens through which to examine the overlapping spatial, ethical, and temporal consequences for humans and the built environment. Urban planning researchers and designers can use HBI principles to humanise the sustainable smart city.