Assessing Sustainability of Cities and Districts for Healthy Communities

Health, quality of life and sustainable development are strongly interconnected. The quality of living is a complex concept that includes different meanings. The quality of life issue has been studied for a long time, even if its measurement is a more recent matter. According to widely accepted definition of a healthy community given by Hancock & Duhl for WHO in 1986: “A healthy city is one that is continually creating and improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources which enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and in developing to their maximum potential”, this paper suggests an approach focused on the effects that urban planning and designing can have on the health of citizens. The experience explained shows as local authorities can support professionals in designing process by a multicriteria assessment tool, that covers a wide range of healthy and sustainable development issues, such as 1) environmental quality and wellbeing, 2) waste, 3) energy and renewable resources, 4) mobility and accessibility, 5) use of land and functional mix, 6) quality of urban landscape. Although the current version of the evaluation tool has been defined in order to carry out design-stage assessments, the system has the capacity to carry out assessments also at later stages. This evaluation procedure can be considered as a common platform from which different stakeholders can agree goals and work together contributing to increase the benefits of a well-designed built environment.