The Active City Perspective

The emergent Active Cities approach has been firstly promoted by the public health sector (Edward and Tsouros, 2008), and investigated through town planning, socio-educational, and physical activity perspectives (Borgogni, 2012; SUSTRANS, 2015; Dorato, 2015; Borgogni and Farinella, 2017). According to our interdisciplinary approach and other studies, a merging of interests is encompassed in the Active City perspective; new urban challenges are emerging and need to be tackled in integrated manners from multiple disciplines, the principal being urban planning and design. The world experiences great urbanization trends: population's progressive aging; globalization; migratory flows and other demographic, socio-economic and geo-political transformations (often connected to the concepts of frailty and vulnerability); modified behaviors and more sedentary lifestyles, mechanization and industrialization processes. Such trends are deeply changing not only the social context as well as people's habits and health conditions, but also the very structure of cities. The aforementioned framework represents an important health care, social and political dare, but also and especially a great urban challenge: for the effects that the consolidated urban models (in terms of livability; connectivity and transport systems; delocalization of cultural, recreational and commercial cores, etc.) have and will have on the health and wellbeing of urban population; for the very direct effects that socio-demographic changes will have on the design and use of public and collective urban spaces, with repercussions on public health; for the reduced financial resources that will limit public investment and the possibilities for good project implementation at urban scale. Thus, the promotion of walkable and, more broadly, physical-activity-friendly urban environments and active lifestyles reaches several requirements: to fight the escalation of non-communicable diseases, prolonging people healthy fitness; to plan and build more sociable and liveable districts; to promote walkability, active commuting and sustainable mobility; to allow children to play; to make physical activity and sport practicable within the urban public realm. The Active City model should be able to guide the practice of urban planning and design and urban regeneration towards more integrated and effective approaches, drawing – for good – within the legislation and the urbanism disciplines topics such as active and sustainable mobility; public health; urban safety and accessibility; sustainability and social inclusion. Also, certain Active City planning criteria are emerging: a revised classification of sport and physical activity infrastructures (IMPALA EU-funded project), their availability, proximity, and accessibility; an awareness of the concepts of tight and loose spaces, space and place, adaptability and flexibility, porosity, ‘egoistic’ and ‘altruistic’ physical activity; the role of citizens’ participation. This approach has been supported, since 2008, by an interdisciplinary study based on direct observations of European sites, stakeholders’ interviews, and other theoretical researches. With the belief that health-enhancing urban policies through leisure-time and active and sustainable mobility are key to reaching both urban sustainability and urban health goals, our research, more recently, has been expanding to specific population groups (children, elderly, commuters), focusing on good planning policies and design practices carried out in the past few decades around Europe, with the aim of highlighting common issues and potentials, possibly adaptable also to Italian cases. At operative and planning level, we started working with local public actors in several cities of the Emilia-Romagna region, tackling issues of accessibility, quality of urban public spaces, urban safety, walkability and active mobility through design. The overall purpose of the various researches and design interventions that our interdisciplinary team has been developing is to better investigate the past and present connections between the fields of urbanism, public health, and PA in order to rely on a better defined framework for addressing – in a near future – the health epidemics and disparities of urban populations also from an Urbanism perspective, and trough a planning and design approach. In order to drive such a process, while approaching the matter with a proactive and more operative-oriented gaze, also new instruments and methodologies are being conceived and tested, trying to overcome the paradoxical lack of planning and design-oriented instruments as well as professional contributions within the Active City field: one above all, the Active City Chart.