Starting from a previous experience carried out by the working group “Building and Environmental Hygiene” of the Italian Society of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine (SItI), the aim of the present work is to define new strategic goals for achieving a “Healthy and Salutogenic City”, which will be useful to designers, local governments and public bodies, policy makers, and all professionals working at local health agencies. Ten key points have been formulated: 1. climate change and management of adverse weather events; 2. land consumption, sprawl, and shrinking cities; 3. tactical urbanism and urban resilience; 4. urban comfort, safety, and security perception; 5. strengths and weaknesses of urban green areas and infrastructures; 6. urban solid waste management; 7. housing emergencies in relation to socio-economic and environmental changes; 8. energy aspects and environmental planning at an urban scale; 9. socio-assistance and welfare network at an urban scale: importance of a rational and widespread system; and 10. new forms of living, conscious of coparticipation models and aware of sharing quality objectives. Design strategies, actions, and policies, identified to improve public health and wellbeing, underline that the connection between morphological and functional features of urban context and public health is crucial for contemporary cities and modern societies.

Bioplastics have proven to be a viable substitute for plastics in some sectors, although their use in construction is still limited. The construction sector currently uses 23% of the world’s plastic production, both for the materials themselves and for their packaging and protection. A considerable part is not recycled and is dispersed into the environment or ends up in landfills. In response to the environmental problems caused by oil-based plastic pollution, the development of biocomposite materials such as bioplastics represents a paradigm shift. This entry aims to explain what bioplastics are, providing a classification and the description of the different properties and applications. It also lays out the most interesting uses of these materials in the construction field.

The awareness of the heavy impact that the building sector exerts on the natural environment is now widely shared, leading to a wide spread of tools...

The chapter summarises the content and objectives of the Da.Ma.Tra (Material Traceability Database) research project, funded by the Lombardy Region within the “Smart Living” competition call. The purpose of the project is to build a web-based digital platform prototype that can handle the constructive traceability of materials for civil buildings. The project’s attention to new materials has a specific focus on the use of bio-based materials and agricultural waste in construction. The economic value of this waste can be increased by encouraging reuse and recycling. This aspect places the research at the edge of the initiatives that favour the concept of sustainable architecture within the broader vision of a circular economy.

The chapter reports the results of a research entitled “Ri-scarto”, conducted with the contribution of the “Fratelli Confalonieri” Foundation of Milan. The research investigates the conditions that can facilitate the cross-sectoral exchange (various manufacturing sectors-construction sector) of pre-consumer by-products and scraps, that can be used and/or recycled for making building products. The research proposes the framework of a cross-sectoral virtual marketplace, where the different stakeholders (manufacturers, possible users of by-products and scraps, industrial process planners, public administrators, etc.), organised in a network, can identify, locate and exchange available reusable waste.