Healthy Urban Planning & Design Strategies to improve the salutogenic approach into contemporary cities

Introduction Starting from the “Urban Health Rome Declaration” (Italian Ministry of Health, 2017) at European meeting “G7 Health” that defines the design aspects and action to improve Public Health, and referring to the Agenda 2030 (United Nations, 2015) in which the 11th SDGs argue about “Sustainable Cities and Communities”, the paper purpose is to describe a conducted literature review, aimed to correlate the Public Health outcomes with the environmental risk factors, and for each of them, define Evidence-Based Design Strategies and Actions, capable to reduce those risk and improve the urban quality. Methods Main focus of the literature review was to collect and analyze tools and framework aimed to assess the urban quality, identifying, moreover, if they include Public Health purposes and outcomes. Results The literature review results are divided into a multiple input diagram: • 14 Health Outcomes, representing the main NCDs, whose occurrence it comes from the urban environment’s quality and by the adoption of healthy life-styles; • 08 types of Environmental Risk Factors (Urban Heat Island Effect; soil / air / acoustic / light pollution; vehicular traffic; safety and security; poor attractiveness of places); • 14 Healthy Urban Planning Strategies (green/blue/grey infrastructures; biodiversity protection; adverse meteoric events management; public transport systems; vehicular traffic reduction; pedestrian and cycling paths; social / functional mixite; urban solid waste’s management; renewable energy and efficiency; outdoor spaces lighting; design for all); • 20 Health Evidence-Based Design Action, useful both for designers and Policy Makers to plan healthy oriented action of urban regeneration or renewal, and to improve the public spaces’ quality and functionality. Conclusions In the last years, researchers and practitioners, both of technical and medical education, identified the need of an multi-disciplinary approach, in order to address the cities’ key features, to Public Health outcomes. Urban Health strategies should be considered since the early stages of urban planning, as mean of Primary Health Prevention and Promotion. The conducted research is the basis for developing further methods, tools and indicators to design and assess the environmental quality. It’s necessary and crucial to evaluate the public space with qualitative and quantitative standard, highlighting the urban context and public spaces features Evidence-Based oriented to promote Healthy life-styles. The paradigm shift in Public Health supports this needed change, moving rom a medical model, focused on the individual, to a social model, where the health is the result of various socio-economic, cultural and environmental factors.