Abstract
The feeling of calm and tranquillity provided by the oases of Algeria can disappear because of the outdated urbanization strategy which is based on the vehicle as a mode of transport. Walkability is one of the most adoptable sustainable strategies to reduce the negative mechanical transportation effects on the quality of life. This paper aimed to examine the correlation and the causation between oases soundscape components and walking speed. The methodology of this field study was based on an empirical approach at the urban settlements in three oases in Algeria. The correlation between walking speed and soundscape components was obtained through the use of the Spearman correlation test. A one-way ANOVA analysis was conducted to assess the effect of the soundscape components on walking speed. A post hoc Tukey test was adopted to explore the sound component that causes increased walking speed. In this study, no significant correlation was explored between the walking speed and the anthrophonical sounds. In contrast, the statistical analysis of the sound walks experience suggests a moderate and significant negative correlation between geophonical and biophonical sounds, with mean walking speed. The results showed that, the cause of the increase in the mean walking speed of the pedestrians is human sound. The findings suggest that further research is needed to focus on the long-term subjective investigation to explore the correlations and the effects between soundscape, walkability and walking speed.
Highlights
The Saharan Oases are often perceived as a place in contrast with their environment
There is no statistically significant difference between the groups and with p = 0.303. These results indicate that human sounds are the soundscape components affecting the mean speed of pedestrians for leisure
Human sounds are the cause of the increase in the mean speed of walkers. This increase in the mean speed of walkers is perhaps due to their frequent hearing of surrounding speech sounds made by women from the inside of their houses. As it is shown in the second section (S2), where we noticed that the highest mean walking speed is corresponding to a strong presence of human voices as is shown in Figure 7, this is due to a respect for the specific social intimacy of these oases
Summary
The Saharan Oases are often perceived as a place in contrast with their environment. They are a particular landscape, composed mainly of water and palm trees surrounded by a sandy desert [1]. Due to the challenging weather conditions characterizing Saharan cities as well as Saharan Oases, decision makers and urban planners favour a transport planning policy which is principally based on using the vehicle [6], instead of relying on walking which is considered a sustainable transport mode [7]. Many researches have examined the sound quality through sound walk [29,30,31,32] From this perspective, the soundscape paradigm considers individuals integrated with their environment [33]. There is a lack of studies examining the behavioural responses to soundscapes in a specific environment, such us the urban oasis complexes of the Saharan desert in northern Africa and Algeria According to this viewpoint, walking speed is one of the behavioural variables [40] that can be examined. Where (Pi/ti) is the ratio between the number of pixels in the sky and the total number of pixels in the ring i
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