Healthy City: an ontological understanding

Over the last few decades, the Healthy City (HC) concept has gained considerable attention by involving numerous research fields (sustainability, urban transformation and management, urban planning, health and social studies, etc.), and by establishing strategic objectives at a global level. The incessant and rapid growth of the urban population, together with the general deterioration of the environment caused by human activities, have implied the extreme need to guarantee and maintain the role of cities as fundamental generators of good health. Such a highly multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach pushes the concept of HC into a complex system, within which it often appears difficult to effectively identify the set of correct and essential elements to be developed. With this in mind, the research aims to analyze HC from an ontological point of view. Ontologies represent efficient tools that allow for more accessible communication, and the integration of information between different sectors and actors. The main purposes consist, first of all, in providing the thematic core of the general theory of HC, and subsequently in implementing the same through a structured ontological basis using, specifically, the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The articulation and interpretation of phenomena through the BFO tool are consistent and intuitive. For this reason, it has been chosen as a means of clarification and facilitation. The thesis intends to define a preliminary ontological schema, in order to provide a valid formalization that can, at a later stage, outline the overall domain of the HC. The ontology will be able to accurately represent the HC dimension linked to reality, and to make the different users involved in healthy urban processes understand the concepts included in it and the concrete entities that these concepts represent.