Biourbanism for a healthy city: biophilia and sustainable urban theories and practices

Abstract

Vital elements in urban fabric have been often concealed for reasons of design. Recent theories, such as Biourbanism, suggest that cities risk becoming unstable and deprived of healthy social interactions. Our paper aims at exploring the reasons for which,fractal cities, for example can have beneficial impact on human fitness of body and mind. During the last few decades, modern urban fabric lost some very important elements, only because urban design and planning became stylistic patterns of fancy aerial views to show mainly iconic signature architecture. Biourbanism attempts to reestablish lost values and balance, not only in urban fabric, but also in reinforcing human-oriented design principles to be easily implemented and understood. The Lancet Commission of Healthy Cities provides an analysis of how health outcomes are part of the complexity of urban processes, highlighting the role that urban planning can, and should play in delivering health improvements through processes of reshaping the urban fabric of our cities around the globe. This paper describes how the application of Biourbanism’s principles can improve the quality of the urban environment with reference to both physical transformations of it and psychological impact upon city inhabitants. Therefore, these principles are accomplished to support urban structural sustainability.