[Adapting the answers to new problems of living in a changing society]

The paper focuses on the health consequences of recent social and economic changes and stresses on the issue of housing emergency, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. What emerges is a bleak picture, especially in the suburbs of large cities, with sanitation problems comparable to those of the time of the Unity of Italy. Authors then analyze the evidence of risk related to degradation of housing and present some examples that quantify the effectiveness of environmental improvement on health. The work concludes stressing the need to bring this issue back to center of the Public Health agenda, both in terms of health impact assessment, both in terms of training and awareness of the different social actors involved, also recovering a political role emphasized by Rudolf Virchow as early as the late nineteenth century.