HEALTHY CITIES THE ROLE OF URBAN DESIGN IN ENHANCING PUBLIC HEALTH

Abstract

This research can be considered a major step for achieving the vision of Healthy Communities. World health problems such as obesity, mental ill-health, increasing health inequalities, and lack of physical activity cannot be fixed by medications, but by improving the social, economic and environmental spheres. The field of urban planning is crucial. As planners, we should begin to include consideration of this issue, as we still tend to see health and well-being as a secondary subject, or even irrelevant to our strategies. It is pivotal that all those who are concerned with the built environment take urgent decisions to tackle the problem of unhealthy human environments. In different ways, we are quite literally creating unhealthy circumstances inside human settlements, although enhancing the healthy environment is not considered an opposition to economic development, rather it is viewed as an essential condition for increased creativity and productivity. However, having overcome the prevalent communicable diseases, partly throughout better town planning, there is now an increasing economic burden from non-communicable diseases. Relying heavily on health care to treat these matters is to misjudge their origins, and is to misunderstand economic realities. The research offers a new perspective by redefining the objective of planning, and putting people, their health and well-being at high priority. It presents a wide range of evidence on how the built environment could support and inform peoples’ health. The research is divided into two parts; the first part includes the concept of healthy planning, the art of planning, and studies from different parts of the globe where similar strategies linking theory and reality have been implemented. The research aims to provide a theoretical framework which includes the planning and designing criteria to promote health and well-being, and creating the conditions for healthy behaviour, and equitable environments. It covers five aspects of the built environment: site selection for creating health communities, creating sustainable urban forms, planning streets for all people, active transportation, and the pattern of land use that could increase physical activity, and access to open green spaces. The second part presents empirical studies showing examples of where the proposed formulated theoretical framework has been applied to the local Egyptian context. Two case studies using a multi method research approach are examined: El Maadi district and El Rehab district,. In addition to structured and semi-structured interviews, observation and site surveys are performed in line with the interviews.