Il progetto dello spazio pubblico per l’invecchiamento attivo = Open Space Design for Healthy Ageing

A growing number of international research and best practices at a global level (Health for All, the EU Network of “Healthy Cities”, the WHO’s Healthy Cities Project, the “Age-friendly cities” project, the Active & Healthy Aging in the Health etc.) explores the relationships between psycho-physical well-being and urban space identifying Physical Activity as a critical protection factor for many chronic diseases. If infective diseases were the threats to health of the past, for which urban planning made sure to secure hygiene and comfort of both cities and individual buildings, today the main killers are the so-called Non-Communi- cable Diseases - cardiovascular diseases, strokes, cancers, diabetes - whose main risk factors are obesity and physical inactivity. It is therefore necessary to reconnect health and environmental planning of urban space and said aspect is witnessed by the use, in many a research, of the wording urban health instead of public health, since the health condition of the population refers to the relationships of users with the physical, natural and social setting they live in. In the debate on the issue of de- signing spaces for “an ageing society”, this paper emphasizes the importance and centrality of the user centered approach through the observation of the relations that are established among people, technological systems and constructed environments in order to design according to anatomical and metric needs (anthropometric view) as well as to the needs linked with perception and cognitive processes (anthropocentric view). Two levels of interface in the person- system relationship have been identified, the “individual space”, where internal variables impact the “user system” (factors related to the psycho-physiological perception of space), and the “prosthetic space”, where external variables in- fluence the “environment system” (factors that influence the capability of the space to become physiologically and behaviorally prosthetic).