Researching towards for healthy cities. Relationship between outdoor and indoor environments in the hospitals

The topic of healthy cities is strategic, as outlined in the Zagreb Declaration for Healthy Cities (2009) that expresses “the clear and strong commitment of political leaders of cities in Europe to strengthen and champion action on health, health equity, sustainable development and social justice”. “A healthy city is one that is continually creating and improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources which enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and developing to their maximum potential”. This paper discusses the relationship between the city, the hospital and its indoor and outdoor environments, and aspects that need to be taken into account when planning a hospital complex within a city to create a continuum across them. In particular, the paper deals with issues related to urban and social integration, and the influence that the functional organization of the physical spaces and the typology of the hospital has on the qualities of the outdoor spaces around the hospital itself. The paper argues that the design process does not consider the outdoor spaces as an integral part of the hospital in a proper way, but only as a residual spaces to support medical activities. Against this backdrop, the paper contends that the outdoor spaces need to be integrated as part of the design process. This paper discusses, also, the topic showing seven big university hospitals in the Italian context. Using the data provided by the national statistics system of the Italian Ministry of Health, seven Italian university hospital complexes with more than 950 beds were selected. Drawing on the analysis of four Italian hospital complexes using the computer software Google Earth Pro, the paper offers insights on the city context, the types of barriers separating the hospital from the city and other relevant data such as the percentage of open and built surfaces, systems of access to the hospital and the number of employees. The aim of the analysis is to offer a reading, also photographic, of the current situation of hospital complexes and their relationships with the city and to analyse the data collected in order to understand the redevelopment potential of the external spaces of the hospital complexes.