Within the last decade, the music city concept has been gaining traction worldwide. While acknowledging that the music city has primarily been valued as a vehicle for urban economic development, this project aims to present a more balanced approach to music cities using a sociocultural lens. Through the use of literature and popular media reviews, semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation, and discourse analysis, several under-explored sociocultural ideas critical to successful music city development are presented. Furthermore, by focusing on the social dimensions of space and place while using systems-focused design, this paper highlights the prominent impacts of music on communities and its role in building and enhancing social infrastructure. This leads to a design intervention aimed at creating more vibrant and enjoyable cities that improve the social health and social infrastructure of communities, specifically via free music in public spaces and the need for music to exist more freely.