Abstract
Understanding the relationship between people and their soundscapes in an urban context of innumerable and diverse sensory stimulations is a difficult endeavor. What public space users hear and how they evaluate it in relation to their performed or intended activities can influence users’ engagement with their spaces as well as their assessment of suitability of public space for their needs or expectations. While the interaction between the auditory experience and activity is a topic gaining momentum in soundscape research, capturing the complexity of this relationship in context remains a multifaceted challenge. In this paper, we address this challenge by researching the user-soundscape relationships in relation to users’ activities. Building on previous soundscape studies, we explore the role and interaction of three potentially influencing factors in users’ soundscape evaluations: level of social interaction of users’ activities, familiarity and expectations, and we employ affordance theory to research the ways in which users bring their soundscapes into use. To this end, we employ a mixed methods design, combining quantitative, qualitative and spatial analyses to analyze how users of three public spaces in Amsterdam evaluate their soundscapes in relation to their activities. We documented the use of an urban park in Amsterdam through non-intrusive behavioral mapping to collect spatial data on observable categories of activities, and integrated our observations with on site questionnaires on ranked soundscape evaluations and free responses detailing users’ evaluations, collected at the same time from park users. One of our key findings is that solitary and socially interactive respondents evaluate their soundscapes differently in relation to their activities, with the latter offering higher suitability and lower disruption ratings than the former; this points to qualitatively different auditory experiences, analyzed further based on users’ open-ended justifications for their evaluations. We provide a methodological contribution (adding to existing soundscape evaluation methodologies), an empirical contribution (providing insight on how users explain their soundscape evaluations in relation to their activities) and a policy and design-related contribution, offering additional insight on a transferable methodology and process that practitioners can employ in their work on the built environment to address the multisensory experience of public spaces.
Highlights
Research shows that urban sound affects the health and wellbeing of urbanites in a significant manner, at the same time influencing the use and appreciation of public spaces (Mehta, 2014; Van Kempen et al, 2014)
We begin with the analysis of the maps resulting from the behavioral mapping process (Figure 3) as they play a descriptive role, that is, to illustrate the larger context in which the questionnaires were filled out in terms of patterns of use based on the level of social interaction of the activities performed
The maps for each public space are an aggregation of the data collected during the two sessions per space and visualize the use of space exclusively in the areas where the behavioral mapping was carried out; the other areas have not been observed due to practical reasons, yet they were consistently frequented by users
Summary
Research shows that urban sound affects the health and wellbeing of urbanites in a significant manner, at the same time influencing the use and appreciation of public spaces (Mehta, 2014; Van Kempen et al, 2014). The questionnaires used as tools to gain insight on users’ soundscape evaluations mostly employ categorical-based assessments and rarely include openended questions (see Yang and Kang, 2005; Raimbault, 2006, the work in the “Positive Soundscapes Project”, Nielbo et al, 2013; Bild et al, 2018 for examples), representing a limited understanding of users’ soundscape evaluations These methods minimize or do not adequately account for the role of moderating factors, like activity, in influencing how people evaluate what they hear, despite increasing evidence on activity as a moderating activity for users’ soundscapes (e.g., Aspuru et al, 2011; Bild et al, 2015, 2018; Steffens et al, 2015). We use the concept of affordance to understand how users of public spaces bring their soundscapes into use through their engagement with and activities performed in their public spaces (Ingold, 2000; Steenson and Rodger, 2015).
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