Ciudades terapéuticas: la sostenibilidad urbana del pasado

Abstract

The next study proposes a parallel journey through the therapeutic cities conceived at the end of the 19th century and today's healthy, sustainable and bio-climatic cities. In this way, we study their similarities and differences, while at the same time discovering how far ahead of their time the oldest ones were, thus spurring us on to continue looking to this healthy urbanity of the past in search of solutions applicable to the urban development of present-day and future cities. The study takes as its reference of a therapeutic city the theoretical city of Hygeia, described in 1876 by Dr Benjamin Ward Richards in his book Hygeia: A City of Health, and it is compared to the district of Kronsberg in Hannover, created on the occasion of the Universal Expo in 2000, an international paradigm of sustainable urban development. The comparison reveals the proximity between the two urban projects and how certain approaches, today considered innovative, were already present in the 19th century. In the same way, in the architectural solutions applied in the sanatorium cities of the first half of the 20th century – true therapeutic cities created to bring an end to a specific disease: tuberculosis, such as the Sanatorium City of Clairvivre and that of Sondalo – construction and climate solutions are sought which are capable of producing energy savings and reducing waste, thus contributing to reducing the carbon footprint.