The Impact of urban design on health (A case Study of The Residential Community Madinaty In Egypt)

Urban planning and design has a large and critical role to play in creating healthy cities by providing creative and equitable urban built form. Through the medium of physical environment the urban planners can enhance the physical, mental and social health of the communities, this can be achieved through various means, from land use patterns, mixed zoning patterns, good connectivity, affordable and effective transport mechanisms, low cost housing, and accessibility to all advantages of urbanization, so building healthy and wealthy cities should become a major goal of the urban planning and design processes. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for instance, poor urban environments were a great threat to city residents from all walks of life, rapidly growing cities experienced severe epidemics of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever. These epidemics were effectively mitigated through investment in public infrastructure and better urban planning, Sewers were built to manage human waste, public parks were created give access to fresh air, building standards were changed to ensure safe shelter, and development regulations served to reduce traffic congestion and relieve urban overcrowding, thus the built environment is a critical factor in human health outcomes. Importantly, visionary architects and planners of the time recognized the role of urban design as a tool for improving health. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that governments place health and health equity at the center of urban governance and planning. In recent years , urban regeneration has widened its approach not only to give cities a new and more competitive look but also to boost cultural, economic and social aspects, so increased attention is being paid to the role of environmental factors in health outcomes. Health-promoting urban design will emerge as a central planning issue over the next decades, underpinned by arguments for containing the car, increasing pedestrian friendly environments, controlling out-of-town shopping, creating local facilities within walking distance, making cities more compact and investing in public transport. The research study objective depends upon that the community designs must discard the old model of segregated, exclusive uses and we need to have a mixture of residential, commercial and institutional uses within a relatively compact area. For the purposes of this study, urban life in Madinaty City of Cairo as the most important new healthy urban communities of Egypt, was investigated according to the quality of built environment