Healthy City Principles and Criteria

The idea of healthy city is an idealistic plan. Although the plan is not more than a few years old, yet its historical roots are very long and vicissitudinous. In fact, 1984 was a turning point in which endeavors of people like professor Dehel, Dr. Eshton and immense supports of World Health Organizations led into introducing and sometimes enforcement of new patterns and policies so that now after more than two decades the idea of healthy city has turned into a global movement.
After the Industrial Revolution, different changes in cities resulted in many problems and issues entangling cities. Therefore, cities faced numerous problems like population explosion, growing growth density, limited housing, poverty problems, breakdown of the city - nature relation, air and noise pollution, unhealthy slums, decrease in healthy level of social life and etc. According to WHO predictions, by 2005 more than 60 percent of the world population will be among urbanites. This urban population will intensify the present problems. Since cities are alive, dynamic and human-centered, planning a healthy city based on its standards and principles is necessary in long term. The present descriptive-analytic article seeks to understand standards and principles of healthy city.