No abstract

It is notable that indoor environment quality plays a crucial role in guaranteeing health, especially if we consider that people spend more than 90% of their time indoors, a percentage that increases for people on low income. This role assumes even further significance when dealing with distressed urban areas, vulnerable areas within cities that suffer from multiple deprivations. The community-based interdisciplinary research-action group of the University La Sapienza focused on a complex in the outskirts of Rome. The aim was to assess the correlations between architectural aspects of the indoor environment, socio-economic conditions, such as lifestyles and housing conditions, and eventually health outcomes. The intent of providing a comparative methodology in a context where official data is hard to find, led to the integration of social, health, and housing questionnaires with various environmental software simulations. What emerged is that underprivileged housing conditions, characterized by mold, humidity, unhealthiness, thermohygrometric discomfort, architectural barriers, and overcrowding, are often associated with recurrent pathologies linked to arthritis, respiratory diseases, and domestic accidents.

This study, carried out by a multidisciplinary research team, deals with the participatory regeneration process of a marginal residential area in the city of Rome. The research focuses on the theme of urban health and the improvement of indoor and outdoor living conditions according to a people-oriented approach. The work was carried out on two fronts: desk research based on urban, health and socio-demographic sources, and a series of field studies. An operational protocol valid in informal contexts, which escape official censuses, was thus elaborated in order to assign objective values of social and housing discomfort, to measure the concept of urban welfare and to identify possible regeneration strategies for the informal habitat.

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Given three-quarters of the European population living in urban areas, cities are expected to deliver sustainable growth if they will be able to further thrive and grow, while improving resource use and reducing pollution and poverty, as highlighted also by Sustainable Development Goal 11. In the context of vulnerable and marginal areas within cities, which suffer from multiple deprivations, regeneration processes at the building and district-scale play the most significant role in making cities more inclusive, sustainable and resilient. Reuse and refurbishment strategies, measured building replacement and stratification, redevelopment and enhancement, nature-based solutions and bioclimatic technological devices, are all tools for an integrated regeneration process capable of stimulating the urban metabolism and act as a driving force for the self-regeneration of the city. A comparison of two different building typologies, brought about by a review of existing public housing case studies in the outskirts of Rome, Italy, allowed us to define efficient, sustainable strategies and guidelines, that can be adapted to similar contexts in terms of building typology, social and economic conditions and of relationship to the rest of the city.