This article examines the role of urban design in integrating biodiversity preservation with the enhancement of environmental and human health and quality of life in urban and peri-urban areas. Building on three complementary perspectives—urban design, the Healthy Habits framework, and socio-ecological networks—the review seeks to bridge short- to medium-term actions for improving the quality of life with long-term strategies for biodiversity preservation. While partial connections between these domains exist, they remain fragmented, underscoring the need for a holistic and transdisciplinary approach to urban socio-ecological health. The study employs a two-stage methodology, combining a scoping review to map existing evidence with a qualitative thematic review across SCOPUS-indexed research, European and international policy frameworks, and practical applications. The One Health paradigm is used as the principal integrative tool to link urban design, the Healthy Habits framework, and the socio-ecological networks. The topics of European environmental policies, evolutionary pillars, and social cohesion are incorporated to strengthen the interrelations between environmental and societal health and well-being. The findings highlight the importance of a holistic approach, behavioural insights, urban nudges, and participation, which can become key elements in fostering social cohesion, ecological resilience, and overall health. The research concludes that health-oriented urban design must go beyond traditional planning paradigms and tools, adopting adaptive, relational, and transdisciplinary approaches to address the challenges posed by contemporary times.

Our evolutionary history is based on four fundamental pillars: physical activity, nutrition, inner mood and external environment. We live at the rhythm of an inner clock that leads everything we do, the so called circadian rhythm. The circadian system, that is ubiquitous across species, generates ~24 h rhythms in virtually all biological processes, and allows them to anticipate and adapt to the 24 h day/night cycle, thus ensuring optimal physiological function. During the day our organism spends its energy in order to complete catabolic pathways which help us in our relationship with the external environment, while at night anabolic pathways, repairing, strengthening and growth-orientated, prevails. External environment can influence both our circadian rhythm and our body chemistry. Within the last 100 years, environmental conditions are extremely changed: the artificial light (also by televisions screens, smartphones and computers) is lighting up our world 24 hours a day, the background noise is a constant in our everyday life and the air pollution represent risk factors for our health and well-being by causing or facilitating diseases. Also our inner mood, emotions and environment are crucial for human beings’ and planet’s health and for the future of mankind. (healthy_habits)

Chronic low-grade inflammation is increasingly proving to be one of the main culprits for the onset of numerous pathologies. Until recently, to try to combat this insidious enemy, we mainly resorted to anti-inflammatory diets, but current scientific evidence seems to support the hypothesis that the maximum impact on health could be obtained above all by following an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Nutrition alone, however important, has proven to be insufficient to guarantee physiological homeostasis, the result of an evolution that lasted hundreds of thousands of years and occurred in symbiosis with ecosystems. Our physiological conditions, and psychosocial relationships with the emotions connected to them, together with the environment, are all elements capable of interacting with each other, decisively influencing the low-grade inflammatory process. The Healthy Habits approach interprets and makes this thought concrete, and, with an integrated and interdisciplinary approach, traces a viable route.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the humankind in December 2019, is steering quick and drastic changes to our habits. The goal of our research is the analysis of the emotional, healthy and physiological effects of this radical routine disruption, in a sample of 3000 Italian people. Methods: We made use of a 5-days flash survey in an anonymous way, available from April the 5th until April the 10th. Results: As expected, results show a healthy decrease, after just one month of lockdown, at several stages: emotional, relational, nutritional and physical. Conclusions: This quarantine period can be considered as an extreme example of immediate sedentary and isolation effects on people. Home habits such as basic physical activity, circadian rhythm routine, proper diet, and correct information consumption can be useful to increase our resilience in difficult times like the current one, but also in our next future.

Human health is increasingly shaped by the environments in which people live, work, learn, receive care and age

ONE HEALTH approach, coined by FAO, perfectly sums up a concept that is strongly emerging in the international scientific community. The environment (especially greenery and trees) plays a decisive role in human health and in wellbeing. A change in the development model that takes these issues into account, starting with the design of greener and more sustainable cities, appears necessary and urgent, given that in 2050 approximately 70% of the world’s population will live in large cities.