Healthy design for sustainable communities. Sistema multicriteriale di valutazione degli aspetti igienico-sanitari di piani di governo del territorio e piani attuativi

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 (26). It’s possible to distinguish two main approaches: the first one, depending on which the quality of life corresponds to the social wellbeing and it can be measured objectively (6, 28, 29); the second one, that emphasizes the perceptive dimension of quality of life, such as needs, feelings and aspirations (3, 7). According to the WHO’s wide definition of wellbeing, this paper suggests an approach focused on the effects that urban planning and designing can have on the health of citizens. Actually many of the problems of the cities like pollution, inequity, lack of services and accessibility depends on decisions about the development of land and buildings. To have more attractive cities in the future it is important that professionals involved in planning and local authorities focus on the major determinants of health: the physical and social environment in which people live and the nature of their lifestyles. The experience explained in this paper shows as local authorities can support professionals in designing process, producing quick and effective benchmark in order to improve the quality of urban spaces and architecture. More in deep the tool works by a set of performance indicators developed with the purpose to assess the degree of sustainability of building and urban space proposals at the planning stage (and at later stages), against a range of criteria. 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.