Integrating Urban Health and Heritage: A Multi-Criterion Framework for Historic Streets

The Healthy Streets Approach has emerged as a human-centered framework for evaluating urban streets in terms of health, safety, and quality of life. Despite its growing prominence in contemporary urban design and policy, its applicability to historic urban environments, characterized by conservation constraints and unique spatial qualities, remains underexplored. Addressing this gap, this study reinterprets the healthy streets within historic contexts by integrating with the streetscape characteristics of heritage environments, and proposes a “healthy historic streets” perspective. The study focuses on Belediye Street, located in the historic city center of Kastamonu, Türkiye. A multi-criteria assessment framework was developed based on six key dimensions: walkability and active mobility, safety, perceptual-physical comfort, air environmental quality, social interaction and inclusivity and place identity attachment. Data were collected through field observations, noise measurements, pedestrian traffic counts and user surveys, and were analyzed using statistical methods. The findings reveal both synergies and tensions between health-oriented street criteria and heritage conservation principles, particularly regarding accessibility, environmental quality, and spatial usability. Based on these insights, context-sensitive design and planning recommendations were developed to enhance public use while preserving the street's historic character. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that the Healthy Streets Approach can be effectively adapted to historic urban contexts and offers a transferable assessment framework for integrating public health objectives with heritage conservation. It highlights the potential of historic streets not only as preserved cultural assets but also as active, health-supportive public spaces within contemporary urban systems.