A city can be designed to provide higher or lower quality living standards depending on the combination of a series of urban parameters. Pollution, noise, extreme temperatures, and the quality of public spaces measured from the perspective of creating an environment that has sufficient infrastructure, equipment, and services to deploy life under current quality standards are capable variables. to discriminate cities and their spaces between those that have been designed to guarantee quality of life and those in which, perhaps, other considerations have prevailed.
The pandemic has transformed the way people perceive and use the city. In most urban settings the mobility restrictions have forced people to better know the ins and outs of the city, with its strengths and weaknesses. people now pays more attention to the services and facilities that are nearby, to what extent have to move to enjoy nature, get to school or go to work, of how the noise of the street exhausts the minds in the days of confinement, or the courage to go out on the balcony and breathe fresh air and clean.
These environment attributes are concepts encompassed within of what is called a healthy city. They are also urban variables that are consolidating in the new conception of cities. And it is that now that we began to put the value of a healthy city on the table, it is time to raise whether or not cities are designed so that the quality of urban life is the first or at least one of the questions that prevail when raising the urban planning and/or to regenerate our cities.
At Naider, we are working on an urban health index that meets these quality parameters, with the aim of identifying the areas with the best and worst results on the map, understanding their background and proposing interventions to act accordingly. If you want to know more, write to us at jiglesias@naider.com
Juan Iglesias
Environmental Urbanist