112 - Towards a Healthy Urbanism

There’s nowadays a common knowledge that the increasing of urban land have caused huge constrains to the population health. Although, the identified good practices in urban planning and design show us that some models can be implemented in order to improve the citizens and communities health. In this sense, the relation between urbanism and public health is a growing area of research, in both empirical and theoretical fields.

In the European context, the examples capable to produce more healthy urban environments have been recognized in the last decades by institutions like the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, the Phillipe Rotthier pour l’Architecture or the Prince’s Foundation for the Building Community, among others. Some of their concerns and practices towards a healthy urbanism are shared by several local communities and also the World Health Organization inserts those remarks in his international guide lines.

Besides the most well-known urban regeneration in Plessis Robinson, near Paris, and the new city of Dorchester, in the United Kingdom, this article presents other projects that deserve equal recognition, some of them remarkable for their contribution in very difficult scenarios. These are the examples of the temporary villages for refugees in Greece, by Richard Economakis, and the intervention in Kabul’s old city, creating jobs and pride, by Scott Liddle and the NGO Turquoise Mountain.