Abstract
The degradation caused by environmental noise affects the sound identities of several areas, especially at a city level, so there is a need for immediate individual and collective action. This paper focuses on the environmental noise impacts towards the soundscapes of historical landmarks located in the city of Thessaloniki (Greece). Furthermore, it offers an insight regarding a new urban quiet area attribute, since it discovers whether elevation contributes to the formation of their sound identity. The first step of this research utilized the opinion of more than 500 residents of Thessaloniki with the aid of a questionnaire, in order to highlight areas of the city’s historic center with unique soundscapes. The resulted soundscapes were studied and analyzed by gathering both quantitative and qualitative data. Finally, these soundscapes were assessed by sound experts in order to thoroughly describe their sound identities. The Roman and Byzantine landmarks studied, being at lower and higher elevation levels, respectively, presented differentiations regarding noise levels and other soundscape characteristics. This paper proposes a new protocol, according to which the factor of elevation is worth considering during the process of identifying and utilizing urban quiet areas.
Highlights
The concept of sound identity is well known within the scientific community [1,2,3,4]
According to the protocol created, a sound recording was conducted at 12:08 p.m. on 12 March, 2020
The Roman Agora could be characterized as a quiet area based on the average sound levels measured in decibels (Figure 3)
Summary
The concept of sound identity is well known within the scientific community [1,2,3,4]. According to Truax [7], a soundscape is shaped by both the conscious and subliminal perceptions of the listener and soundscape analysis based on the perceptual and cognitive attributes such as foreground, background, contour, rhythm, silence, density, space, and volume. From these terms, more analytical concepts were derived, similar to keynotes, sound events, soundmarks, sound objects, and sound signals. Ecoacoustics investigates the relationship between natural and anthropogenic sounds with the environment [15] using new technologies regarding audio recording and signal analysis. Acoustics2020, 3 FOR PEER REVIEW Byzantine Church in Hagia Sophia (Square) Qualitative data Biophony volume Anthropophony
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