Investigating the Healthy House in the Cities: (Case Study of Ardabil City)

In the present age, health describes a comprehensive concept of quality of life. One of the important health issues is healthy housing. As an area where people spend a significant part of their lives, housing plays an important role in providing people with peace and well-being. Therefore, healthier homes can prevent many physical and mental illnesses and affect the health of the individual and the community. On the contrary, unhealthy housing affects multiple dimensions of health and causes many problems for the individual on the micro and macro levels. Today, due to the sharp decline in the quality of housing and residential areas and the increase of environmental pollution, including air and noise pollution, inappropriate management of waste and the harmful effects of chemicals, etc. in cities, it is necessary to pay more attention to healthy housing and the provision of safe housing for citizens; this is especially important in the developing countries. Therefore, research on healthy housing can make the ground for residents to live in healthy housing and prevent contaminated diseases and accidents due to incomplete and non-standardized residential units. In this regard, it is important to study the cities the wide variety of their dwelling places. This research uses descriptive-analytical method in the form of documents and field studies to collect information. It investigates the level of utilization of urban areas of Ardabil in terms of having healthy housing indices. Accordingly, the statistical population of this study was all residential units in urban areas of Ardabil. Using Morgan table, 420 residential units were selected as the sample population. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive statistics, chi-square test, F test, Duncan test and Spearman correlation coefficient were used to test the research hypotheses.

The findings show that about 81.2%, 83.6%, 74.8%, 79%, 80.2%, and 65.2% of the residential units of Ardabil are suitable in terms of comfort, convenience, safety, health, sustainability, and vitality indices, respectively. Finally, in terms of the total index of healthy housing, about 83.3% of residential units of the city are in a favorable condition and about 16.7% are not.

The results indicate that Ardabil has a relatively favorable status in terms of having healthy housing indices, but there is a significant difference between its urban areas. The difference is such that District 3 is the best district in terms of indicators of healthy housing and District 4 has the most unfavorable condition in terms of these indices. Districts 1 and 2 are respectively in the second and third places. The results also show that there is a direct correlation between the desirability of socioeconomic characteristics of residents of urban areas and having healthy housing indices and that there is a reverse relationship between building age and healthy housing indices.