Criteria for healthy urban environments.

Indicators derived from a taxonomy of environmental hazards to health can help in assessing the health of a city and its citizens. These criteria may also be related to a city's contribution to the health of its natural environment. The proposed indicators for the city's and the citizens' "sickness" and health are intended to form a matrix, modified by experience. This may generate a database for monitoring changes. Thereafter it could be applied to studies comparing the health of the built environment with that of its human inhabitants, and its natural environment. Ultimately such studies may be used to prevent health hazards to the city and to protect and promote city health. Once the causes of the variables of environmental and human health are determined, attention could also be given to aspects of human health not directly related to those of the city. I discuss the advantages of such a holistic approach over "salad" lists, single theory or issues, and fragmented approaches. The underlying problems of the human condition in cities are so nearly indeterminable and unaddressable that ultimately decisions on policies and their implementations must be based on intuition. However, good intuition works on the best information available.