Nature-Based Solutions for Healthy Cities: Cross Scale Interaction

Starting from the consideration of planning as a complex activity and on the assumption of the city as an open ecological system, the key point is understanding, describing and interpreting the whole set of useful information and related connections deriving from the following aspects: urban studies, ecology, weather and climate, health. Nowadays, it is worldwide accepted that the quality of urban life depends on some basic elements such as Nature-based Solutions (NBS), ecosystem services, quality of environment, social equality, appropriate and well-dimensioned transportation systems. The interrelation among very different fields of knowledge and science, together with the growing awareness about the networking among all the elements composing the complex urban system, require defining common syntactical rules and laws. Therefore, it is clear how much certain information that are not still defined in the classic urban modeling (such as weather and climate information and forecast) become relevant. The relations among environmental pollution, urban density, urban functions and urban green system are well known but, in example, daily quality of air depends also on weather conditions. On the other hand, weather modeling arrived at a very high specialization, and climate forecast too. Both of them can be accurately described through geographical analysis. In terms of effects of pollution on human health, these last data assume a strong importance; in this case, health information are usually geographically identified only in a very wide scale, because of privacy needs. Authors present a discussion about the different scale of the single elements modeling (spatial, weather, climate, health), propose a framework for data combination to enhance a healthier city and consider as example the city of Segrate (in Milan Metropolitan area).