Current approaches to planning (with) sound

Abstract

While sound plays a critical role in our experience of the built environment, professionals feel ill-equipped to design and plan with sound in mind. Through a document analysis for 22 planning projects from Quebec, we aim to better understand how sound considerations are integrated into planning in practice. We identify and characterize the observed strategies and propose a typology of sound approaches in planning along two axes related to 1) the integration of the project into the pre-existing sound environment (from continuity to disruption) and 2) the nature and extent of sound considerations (from minimal to composite). This mapping revealed four main approaches to planning with sound, namely insufficient, sufficient, necessary, and extensive. The analysis further highlights a disconnect between planning and sound considerations, partly related to the abstract nature of planning considerations that exert an inherent but rarely acknowledged influence on sound. This disconnect is clearly visible at a tipping point between (flexible but vague) planning considerations and (concrete but technical) sound considerations when projects tend toward a more difficult integration into the pre-existing environment. We conclude with suggestions on how to move toward composite approaches to better integrate sound into planning.