New Green Spaces for Urban Areas: A Resilient Opportunity for Urban Health

The Covid-19 pandemic underlined the positive role of public green spaces for the physical and mental health of citizens forced into long periods of immobility and social distancing. In cities with high population density, these restrictions have underlined the need to increase public green spaces and their accessibility. Indeed, green spaces have the role of improving urban health in terms of mitigating environmental impact, improving air quality, reducing the transmission of diseases, and promoting the psycho-physical well-being of citizens. After analysing the possible Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) applicable at urban scale and their advantages in terms of urban health, this chapter aims to apply them to public spaces (such as streets and squares) and large public buildings located in the central areas of historic high-density cities. The use of NBSs in the transformation and regeneration of consolidated urban fabrics aims at enhancing their resilience, constituting new public spaces with social purpose, useful even in emergency periods of physical distancing. A new methodological approach is implemented and applied in the compact fabric of the historic city centre of Naples, through two phases: (i) as built analysis, (ii) intervention. Several buildings and public spaces are identified and the readiness to increase accessible and non-accessible green spaces is assessed, to obtain spaces for social use, as well as to mitigate the environmental impact. Pre- and post-intervention results show that non-accessible green spaces are easier to increase through the construction of green roofs, while accessible green spaces that can be used by citizens are more complex. Nevertheless, a significant increase in accessible green spaces is achieved. The application of NBSs in urban areas, is not only a technical strategy, but also a resilient solution, as it can transform some existing spaces into green ones with social value, and improve urban health.