IN-PERSON Barcelona Livable Cities. Section A

Abstract

The relationship between public health and urban planning is crucial to promoting healthy lifestyles and environments. The 2017 Rome Declaration defines Urban Health as a strategy that integrates health promotion policies into spatial and urban planning, identifying services that have a positive impact on the population well-being. Urban environments should be designed to promote inclusion, social engagement, and environmental sustainability, to reduce health inequalities and improve the quality of life. Cities such as Barcelona exemplify this duality: they offer a high standard of living, but also face challenges such as pollution, urban density, and high living costs. Bologna shares similar characteristics, making both cities relevant for studying urban health dynamics. Within this context, hospitals – places of care by definition – play a crucial role. Their outdoor spaces should be reimagined not only as functional spaces for treatment, but as integral parts of the urban fabric with broader public health implications. A literature review on urban health led to the identification of ten key components, later adapted to two (hospital and urban) different dimensions. Moreover, the case study of the renewal of the Sant’Orsola Polyclinic outdoor spaces – one of Bologna’s main hospitals – offered the opportunity to extend the analysis to the main hospitals of the city of Barcelona, due to their comparable features. Such analysis revealed which components were most addressed across institutions, helping to identify strengths and gaps. Ultimately, this informed a conceptual framework to guide the definition of urban renewal strategies for hospital open spaces.