[ad_1]
Researchers around the world like Howes are investigating how non-visual information defines a city’s character and influences its livability. Using a variety of methods, from low-tech audio walks and scent maps to data scraping, wearable devices and virtual reality, they are battling what they see as a limiting visual bias in urban planning.
Academic and musician Oğuz Öner says, “Even just being able to close your eyes for 10 minutes gives you a completely different feeling about a place.”
Öner has been organizing sound walks for years in which blindfolded participants tell what they have heard at different points in Istanbul. His research identified places where vegetation could be planted to reduce traffic noise or a wave organ could be built to amplify the soothing sounds of the sea; He was surprised to find that people could hardly hear even on the seashore.
Öner says local officials are interested in his findings, but have not yet incorporated them into city plans. But such individual feedback on the sensory environment is already being used in Berlin, where quiet areas identified by citizens using a free mobile app are included in the city’s latest noise action plan. Under EU law, the city is now obliged to protect these areas against increased noise.
“The way quiet areas are defined is often very top-down, based either on land use or high-level parameters such as distance from motorways,” explains Francesco Aletta, research fellow at University College London. “This is the first instance I’m aware of where something based on perception has become policy.”
As an EU funded member Soundscape Indices In the project, Aletta helps build predictive models of how humans will respond to various acoustic environments by compiling both live and tranquil recorded soundscapes into a database and then testing the neural and physiological reactions they elicit. Such tools are essential, experts say, to create a practical framework for cities to ensure that multi-sensory elements are incorporated into design criteria and planning processes.
The best way to determine how people respond to different sensory environments is the subject of some debate in the field. Howes and colleagues take a more ethnographic approach, using observation and interviews to develop a set of best practices for good sensory design in public spaces. Other researchers are moving to higher technology, using wearable devices to monitor biometric data such as heart rate variability as a proxy for emotional responses to different sensory experiences. The EU-funded GoGreen Routes project looks at this approach as it examines how nature can be integrated into urban areas in ways that improve both human and environmental health.
[ad_2]
Source link