The concept auf urban soundscapes in the context of alternative small-scale mobility interventions – the Be-MoVe Project

Einleitung For a transformation of cities into sustainable and health-promoting places, the development of suitable acoustic urban spaces is necessary. The acoustic environment, as a designable quality in urban spaces, can be understood as an important resource for a health-promoting city. In particular, motorized mobility plays a central role in urban areas, as recently demonstrated by the massive impact of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions on the urban acoustic environment. The Be-MoVe (participation-based transformation of active mobility for health-promoting urban and transport infrastructures) project is a new public health intervention project, launched end of 2021. The main objective of the cooperation project of the Green Capital Agency of the city of Essen, the Institute for Mobility and Urban Planning and the Institute for Urban Public Health is to test co-created alternative forms of mobility and designs of public spaces in neighborhoods.

Aim here is to present the study design of the sub-project urban soundscapes. The sub-project addresses the evaluation of planned temporary mobility interventions in terms of their impact on recorded noise emission as well as on the perceived acoustic environment of local residents.

Methoden Real-World Labs will be set up in two Essen neighborhoods over the next two years. Together with local residents various temporary measures such as road closures, speed reductions, protected bike lanes and premium pedestrian routes will be implemented on an experimental basis for several months. To assess the perceived acoustic environment, we conduct soundwalks, a participatory instrument described and standardized in the DIN ISO 12913 series. The DIN standards provide guidelines for the application of soundwalks, including questionnaires. The questionnaires aim to identify distinctive sound sources as well as to evaluate the perceived sounds according to predefined criteria, including affective qualities. Soundwalks will be conducted before, during and after the interventions developed in the Real-World Labs. Eight sound walk groups of five people each are planned. Participants are recruited via public relations work, as well as by directly approaching local actors such as sports clubs and citizens' initiatives.

In addition, automatic and binaural audio recordings are performed. The recordings allow to analyze the acoustic environment of primarily physical-acoustic characteristics from biophonic, geophonic and anthrophonic sounds and to compare changes of the acoustic environment due to the interventions independent of human perception.

Ergebnisse -

Schlussfolgerung The inclusion of the concept of sound quality in regard to mobility interventions as well as a link between perception-related and physical-acoustic parameters represent innovative components of this project. The implementation of the soundscape concept in participation-based urban transformations might help to motivate residents for a more health promoting and sustainable active mobility.

Publication History

Article published online:
22 August 2022