Untapping the potential of soundwalks as participatory methods for co-designing smart cities

Abstract

Nowadays, the mainstream smart city paradigm relies on uncritical, massive use of technology, deployed with the promise of addressing sustainability challenges affecting large, densely populated cities. Likewise, a scrutiny of literature in the field of environmental noise shows the tendency to exploit technological innovation to implement a noise-based, top-down approach in the evaluation of the acoustic environment, which on the other hand overlooks the health and psychological effects of noise on people. This contribution reflects on this contradiction and discusses how the people-centred soundscape concept and its methods, i.e., the soundwalks, can counterbalance such criticalities informing the smart city paradigm. After providing a brief introduction to soundscape theory and methods, two case studies of soundwalks conducted with the public in Berlin and New York are presented. In conclusion, the studies’ limitations are discussed and recommendations on the potential of soundwalks as participatory methods for co-designing smart cities are provided so as to possibly orientate future research and professional practice.