Hello and welcome!
What does your favorite spot in your hometown sound like? What kinds of sounds make you feel relaxed and what kinds make you nervous? What aspects of a place do you think sounds convey? What effects do sounds, pleasant or annoying have on our short-term mental state? What about in longer-term health outcomes? In this story, I want to try and answer some of these questions and show work done to measure human response to sounds at the city scale. We’ll explore sound as a key element of urban planning and take a look at some interesting data visualization projects. Let’s dive in!
Chatty Maps and Mexico City:
Here is a really cool project by Good City Life research group, showing what each street in 12 cities from London to New York sounds like. In the interactive map, you can click on any street and look at the breakdown of the sources split into 6 categories: transport, nature, human, music, mechanical, and indoor sounds. They also map these components into the human emotions they provoke: anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust. This project is (aptly) called “Chatty Maps” and is aimed at producing “the first urban sound dictionary”, which studies the relations between what a streets sounds like and what people perceive while being in it:
Some interesting findings included how “human” sounds evoked joy, whereas “mechanical” sounds provoked anger and fear. The authors also mention individual perception differences as playing a role in how these soundscapes affect a person such as differences in age, demographics or sound sensitivity. Here is a plot of the types of streets and their correlation with emotion (green for positive, red for negative):
Here is another example of “mapping” sound I encourage you to check out. What sounds can you hear from standing on a street in Mexico City? This audio essay by Pudding, a data journalism agency, explores this question. The story walks you through different areas of a busy street in Mexico City and points at different types of sounds. For instance, mobile tamales vendors, organ grinders, fruits and vegetable sellers all overlay into the soundscape of Mexico City. They are a key part of the identity of the city, and showcase part of the daily activities of its people.
Character and Noise
As in the case of the Mexico City, it’s clear that a city’s sounds convey the “feel” of a place more than perhaps a 2-D map does. People have tried to capture a city’s character through sounds in other projects as well: the MIT Community Innovators Lab has been “has been asking people all over the world to send in two-minute soundbites”, to some really interesting results. For instance, in one of Ghana’s busiest streets, you can hear some of Accra’s typical “street hustle” with many people greeting each other in various languages and vendors calling out on potential customer. In Thessaloniki’s soundbite, you can hear quieter voices, and people worried about the economic recession. In Portland, Maine you can hear street performers and preachers struggling to be heard over one-another (Bloomberg Article).
However, not all of a city’s characteristic sounds are pleasant. With all these bustling center come larger and larger amounts of noise which is often asymmetrically distributed. Check out this data sonification project by Duncan Geere and Car Free Megacities:
In it, you can hover over maps of Paris, London and New York and hear what each street sounds like for yourself (accompanied by a noise intensity gauge on the side). Some larger arterial streets are obviously louder than residential ones, and areas close to airports tend to be the loudest. It is still interesting to see whether there are hidden patterns within the data too. Noise is an ubiquitous feature of urban life, which has many effects on our health from increases in stress levels, blood pressure and heart rate up to losing life years if living in highly noisy areas. Whether annoying or dangerous, understanding noise is an important part of learning how to live a healthier life in an urban area.
Parting Thoughts:
Overall, this issue focused on sound, which is a relatively overlooked aspect of urban planning but still influential in our health and well-being many indirect ways. We saw some cool projects trying to map cities’ character, noise levels and how sounds get perceived depending on their source and on individual factors.
Hope you liked this story and let me know what you think!