Improving sustainability in architectural research: Biopsychosocial requirements in the design of urban spaces

There is an ever increasing interest in identifying the links between architecture and public health and in how urban design can positively influence the latter. The psychology of sustainability and sustainable development represents an innovative research area as a recent contribution to sustainability science and its trans-disciplinary configuration. The research topic deals with the importance and the centrality of the user-centered approach in the observation of the relationships among mankind, technological systems, and built environments, for projects that guarantee the conditions of physical, mental, and social well-being. Starting from the plurality of different disciplinary sectors, from anthropometry and sociology to psychology, "human experience" and user's expectations are explored, understood, and systematized. The analysis of the relationship between health and urban design has allowed researchers to identify design strategies to improve the level of urban livability. The city of Pisa is the case study; mobility within the city is redefined through various levels of the use of space so that paths and areas of inclusion and socialization are re-valued, while new scenarios for some urban spaces open up. In this perspective, the design strategies synthetically follow two main directions: the re-appropriation of these places by the citizens and, at the same time, the promotion of their well-being from both a physical and psychological point of view.