Ten questions concerning soundscape valuation

Jiang, Like; Bristow, A; Kang, Jian; Aletta, Francesco; Thomas, Rhian; Notley, Hilary; Childress, M.; Nellthorp, John

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109231

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…They include the provision and restoration of green areas, such as parks, urban forests, street trees and green roofs, rain gardens, wetlands, and community gardens (Geneletti et al, 2022). As previously highlighted in the literature, the benefits of NBS on human wellbeing from an improved soundscape are poorly identified and often not taken into account (Dick et al, 2020), or their consideration is limited to the benefit related to noise pollution reduction (European Commission, 2021;Jiang et al, 2022), intended as dB noise level abatement. Therefore, despite the potential to improve people's wellbeing and quality of life, the benefits associated to NBS in terms of positive soundscapes and improvement of the quality of heard sounds are generally Moreover, whilst the connection to natural sounds has long been a topic of investigation and appears to be important for the perception of quietness and for stress reduction, the literature call for more research on urban sounds potential of defining positive everyday indoor soundscapes (Ratcliffe, 2019;Torresin et al, 2020b).…”

Section: Urban Planning Nature-based Solutions and Indoor Soundscapementioning

confidence: 99%

The actual and ideal indoor soundscape for work, relaxation, physical and sexual activity at home: A case study during the COVID-19 lockdown in London

et al. 2022

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The period of home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic made the importance of a high-quality surrounding environment even more evident than before. Several studies have been carried out to assess the (negative) impacts of noise on annoyance, particularly whilst working from home (WFH). The present study takes a step further by (1) investigating the positive and negative impacts of the “actual” acoustic environment on a range of activities, i.e., WFH, relaxation, physical, and sexual activities, and (2) identifying the characteristics of an “ideal” indoor soundscape. The study is based on the qualitative analysis of verbal descriptions collected from open-ended questions included in a survey administered in January 2021 to 464 respondents living in London, during the COVID-19 lockdown. The range of impacts in the actual scenario varied from no effect on task execution, to disruption, distraction, concern of disturbing others or being heard. Positive impacts included support of concentration, relaxation, motivation, freedom of sound expression, feeling of being connected to the surroundings and comforted by the presence of others, according to mechanisms described in the study. Negative appraisal could trigger coping strategies (e.g., controlling windows, playing music, wearing headphones) and behavioural changes (e.g., lowering the volume of the voice or music, muting oneself during call, changing workout type) that could in turn limit or enhance the freedom of behaviour, affect or foster wellbeing. Negative impacts were most frequently reported on WFH (by 55% of the participants), followed by relaxation activities (40.6%), sexual activities (30.1%), and home workout (20.1%). The ideal soundscape was described as a quiet, well-sound insulated environment, which guarantees access to positive sounds (i.e., natural sounds, music, urban background), thus resulting in privacy, intimacy, and a place where to express themselves without noise-related constraints. The study complements literature findings on housing design directions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, by providing further evidence on the impacts of poor sound insulation at home, the potential benefits of nature-based solutions for positive indoor soundscapes, and opportunities for an activity-based design of domestic environments, inclusive of a broader set of home uses and household compositions.

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Section: Urban Planning Nature-based Solutions and Indoor Soundscapementioning

confidence: 99%

The actual and ideal indoor soundscape for work, relaxation, physical and sexual activity at home: A case study during the COVID-19 lockdown in London

et al. 2022

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“…Here, first results show associations between the perceptions of the AE and, for example, induced stress or recovery periods from (psychological) stress [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Still, the assessment of the AE on a larger scale is limited to sound pressure levels, and the (audible) time–frequency domain of the urban AE is only rarely assessed [ 18 , 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing Interlinked Frequency Dynamics of the Urban Acoustic Environment

Haselhoff

Braun

Hornberg

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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As sustainable metropolitan regions require more densely built-up areas, a comprehensive understanding of the urban acoustic environment (AE) is needed. However, comprehensive datasets of the urban AE and well-established research methods for the AE are scarce. Datasets of audio recordings tend to be large and require a lot of storage space as well as computationally expensive analyses. Thus, knowledge about the long-term urban AE is limited. In recent years, however, these limitations have been steadily overcome, allowing a more comprehensive analysis of the urban AE. In this respect, the objective of this work is to contribute to a better understanding of the time–frequency domain of the urban AE, analysing automatic audio recordings from nine urban settings over ten months. We compute median power spectra as well as normalised spectrograms for all settings. Additionally, we demonstrate the use of frequency correlation matrices (FCMs) as a novel approach to access large audio datasets. Our results show site-dependent patterns in frequency dynamics. Normalised spectrograms reveal that frequency bins with low power hold relevant information and that the AE changes considerably over a year. We demonstrate that this information can be captured by using FCMs, which also unravel communities of interlinked frequency dynamics for all settings.

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“…A wide range of perspectives have been explored in soundscape, including how attention on the external environment is shaped internally; interactions between emotion and soundscape; how expectation affects soundscape; interactions between behaviour and soundscape; how social relations, integration and support affect soundscape; how meaning is attached to the objects within a cultural/societal context; the effect that a stressed or harmonised human-environment relationship can have on mental health; and soundscape valuation, following noise valuation (Ge and Hokao 2004;Dubois and Catherine 2007;Aletta et al 2016;Ren et al 2018a;Cao and Kang 2019;Qin et al 2020;Jiang et al 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soundscape in city and built environment: current developments and design potentials

Kang

2023

City Built Enviro

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In the field of environmental acoustics, the conventional approach of reducing ‘sound level’ does not always deliver the required improvements in quality of life. Soundscape, defined by the ISO as the ‘acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context’, promotes a holistic approach, regarding sounds as ‘resources’ rather than just ‘wastes’. The first part of this review/position paper, mainly using the works by the author and the teams/collaborators as examples, discusses the current developments in soundscape, in terms of soundscape understating and exchanging, collecting and documenting, harmonising and standardising, creating and designing, and outreaching, showing that while considerable works have been carried out, much work is still needed, in terms of basic research, and more importantly, research towards practice. The second part of this paper then explores a soundscape approach in the urban sound design/planning process. With a proposed framework for designing soundscape in urban open public spaces, considering four key components, including characteristics of each sound source, acoustic effects of the space, social/demographic aspect of the users, and other physical conditions, design potentials are demonstrated.

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Ten questions concerning soundscape valuation

Cited by 20 publications

References 77 publications

The actual and ideal indoor soundscape for work, relaxation, physical and sexual activity at home: A case study during the COVID-19 lockdown in London

The actual and ideal indoor soundscape for work, relaxation, physical and sexual activity at home: A case study during the COVID-19 lockdown in London

Analysing Interlinked Frequency Dynamics of the Urban Acoustic Environment

Soundscape in city and built environment: current developments and design potentials

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