Soundwalking with children for a quieter and healthier city

ABSTRACT

Road traffic noise constitutes the second most harmful environmental stressor in Europe, affecting over 125 million people every year. Excessive exposure to noise can cause cardiovascular disease, sleep disturbance and cognitive impairment, especially for children. Notwithstanding that children are rarely included in environmental noise evaluation. Noise mitigation measures mainly address noise sources, overlooking people’s perception. The same applies for the identification and protection of quiet areas; an effective noise reduction measure recommended by the Environmental Noise Directive. Although the European Environment Agency recommended the adoption of methods addressing human perception, i.e. the soundscape approach, how children can be included in quiet areas identification remains rather understudied at the European policy level. This contribution addresses this issue, illustrating the case of a soundwalk conducted with children in Berlin for the 2017 International Noise Awareness Day within the context of the ‘Beyond the Noise: Open Source soundscapes’ project. Firstly, the project’s rationale is outlined, then the soundwalk procedure is detailed and the findings presented. In conclusion, it is argued that building healthier and quieter cities can be possible if we educate children on the importance to our health of living in good sonic environments, and if we include them in soundscape evaluation.

KEYWORDS:

• Health
• city
• noise
• soundscape
• children
• soundwalk

Acknowledgments

The soundwalk was organised by the author and Mr M. Jäcker-Cüppers of ALD, in collaboration with: Rabea and Dominik of the Stadtteilbüro Reuterkiez Berlin, the teacher Juliana Kohl and the students of the Rütli school.

The soundwalk was supervised by Prof. Dr. B. Schulte-Fortkamp (TU Berlin), who acted as the National Representative for Germany for the 2017 International Noise Awareness Day.

The author is grateful to the children for their commitment and interest in the activity, and to the children’s family who agreed to share the pictures taken during the soundwalk.

The diagram illustrated in Figure 3 was made by Charlotte Weber, Hush City Mobile Lab, TU Berlin, using the soundwalk’s data and following indications given by the author.

The soundwalk for the 2017 International Noise Awareness Day was conducted within the framework of the “Beyond the Noise: Open Source Soundscapes” project envisioned and developed by the author at the Technical University of Berlin, and funded by the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement no. 600209 (TU Berlin – IPODI).

The “Soundwalking in the kiez!” program was initiated within the framework of the “Beyond the Noise: Open Source Soundscapes” project and it is continued within the context of the “Hush City Mobile Lab” project. The latter is envisioned and developed by the author at the Technical University of Berlin, and funded by the HEAD-Genuit Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonella Radicchi

Antonella Radicchi’s expertise encompasses integrated urban design and planning, soundscape research, quiet areas, qualitative research methods and tools, like soundwalks and the citizen science Hush City app. Dr. Radicchi is currently HEAD-Genuit Foundation Senior Research Fellow at the Technical University of Berlin, where she leads the Hush City Mobile Lab project. Dr. Radicchi is a registered architect and she holds a Ph.D. in Urban Design and Territorial Planning, with doctoral studies conducted at MIT (Cambridge, USA) and at the University of Firenze (IT). Her research and professional work on soundscape has been internationally awarded.