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

AbstractIn 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.