The preservation value of urban soundscape and its determinant factors

Abstract

Improvement of the sound environment is essential for improving the overall quality of the urban environment and for reflecting the characteristics of a city. Unfortunately, some soundscapes in cities are gradually being destroyed by the rapid development. Therefore, it would appear that the preservation of soundscapes is as necessary and crucial as noise control in cities. In this paper, two field studies were carried out at two stages to explore the types and characteristics of urban soundscapes that should be preserved, based on the example of Tianjin, China. At stage one, 2504 respondents participated in social surveys to recommend the soundscapes worthy of preservation in the city. At stage two, a group soundscape walk with twenty-three participants was carried out to explore the characteristics of soundscapes worthy of preservation suggested by the respondents at the first stage. The following results were obtained: (1) regarding the attitude towards the urgency of soundscape preservation, 79% of the respondents thought it was urgent or very urgent, with an average score of 4.04 (five-point numeric scale was used and five meant very urgent). (2)The majority of soundscapes worthy of preservation were located in urban parks and historic districts with respective proportions of 66% and 20%. The top three sound source categories of these soundscapes were social/communal sounds (talking, bells, laughter, and sounds from human activities), animal sounds (birdsong and sounds from non-domesticated animals) and water sounds.(3) Relaxation, vibrancy, representativeness, strength, and richness were principal characteristics of the soundscapes worthy of preservation. (4) Based on their characteristics, these soundscapes were classified into five clusters using hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). They were clusters of relaxing nature soundscape, vibrant nature soundscape, vibrant human activity soundscape, culture-related soundscape and traditional soundscape. The dominant characteristic of each cluster was driven by its sound mark rather than the dominant sound.

– The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2020: Official Conference Proceedings

“…This research also corroborates that public squares adjacent to markets are strategic elements when improving the quality of the urban environment (Jia et al, 2020). The inclusion of the different factors that underlie the soundscape is, in fact, crucial in formulating plans that reverse the negative trend of deterioration of urban sound.…”

A Review of the Use of Psychoacoustic Indicators on Soundscape Studies

“…Regarding the statistical units, it was observed that some studies used beside averages, percentiles and variability between percentiles (e.g. P 10 -P 90 ) [37,43,46,51,64,78,82], but no study found in the literature review considered the ratio between percentiles, which could explain dynamics phenomena according to Genuit and Fiebig [89]. Accordingly, the ISO/TS 12913-3 proposes the quotient of the loudness N 5 and N 95 as an indicator of the magnitude of loudness variability [90].…”

Music Literacy and Soundscape Perception: A Study Based on the Soundwalk Method of Soundscapes

“…Their most recent soundscape research in the Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia provides information on the applicability of the tools and procedures used in closed spaces for the acoustic study of open and semi-open intangible cultural heritages [ 24 ]. Chinese scholars have also conducted research on the soundscapes of cities [ 25 , 26 , 27 ], temples [ 28 , 29 ], and parks [ 30 , 31 ]. In a soundscape experiment combined with EEG technology in an urban park in Chongqing, China, Xie found that more restorative EEG responses were observed under auditory stimulation than under audiovisual stimulation [ 32 ].…”