Geographies of Urban Sound

Torsten Wissmann. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. x and 264 pp., maps, photos, tables, illustrations, bibliography, index. $109.95 cloth (ISBN 978-1-4094-6219-4); $195.55 e-book (ISBN 978-1-4094-6220-0).

Torsten Wissmann has written a most thorough examination of an oft-neglected topic in geography—the influence that sound plays in our everyday lives, especially in urban environments. The relatively small number of geographers who have approached the urban sonic environment have usually confined themselves to an examination of music rather than exploring the wider topic of sounds in the urban environment. Wissmann, a geographer at Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany, is also an experienced podcaster and quite knowledgeable about the technologies of sound production and reproduction. He is, therefore, eminently qualified to write about the ways that sounds are produced and also their impact on those receiving those sound waves.

Wissmann's focus is on those taken-for-granted, sometimes disruptively pleasing, but more often annoying, sonic features of the urban environment. Traffic noise in neighborhoods built next to heavily traveled thoroughfares and communities within the flight paths of a major airport are examples of the sounds Wissmann investigates. His approach to the geographic study of sound is a curious mixture of science and humanism. Wissmann invites us to experience the pleasant aspects of sound that give urban life its sonic variety, including the relative quiet and enjoyable sounds of nature in urban green spaces. He also explores the distinctive “soundmarks” that give communities within cities their distinctive sense of place, such as the tolling of Big Ben in London's Parliament Building. The author even focuses on the silences that complete the sound palette and may be used as counterpoint to the hubbub of everyday sounds to affect reflection, contemplation, and a sense of the sacred.

He surveys a wide array of literature on sound, generating an extensive bibliography of sources. This includes literature derived from the work of continental phenomenologists including the well-known work of Husserl to the lesser known concepts attributed to Waldenfels. He also cites numerous studies on the measurement of the intensity and duration of sound by acoustic engineers, architects, and others concerned with the urban built environment. Much of the literature that he surveys comes from the relatively new research area of acoustic ecology. Because he is a geographer, he also reviews the work of fellow geographers who have studied music from a variety of methodological perspectives.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first (“Thoughts on Sound and the City”) provides an accessible discussion of the continental philosophy of phenomenology and the active constructionist methodological approach. The second chapter (“Sound Effects”) presents basic information on the physiology of the human ear and our reception of sound waves as well as the impact of hearing loss and even the use of sound, especially loud and repetitive ones, as a form of torture, causing sleep deprivation and a variety of other physical maladies.

In Chapter 3 (“Sound in the City”), Wissmann extends his examination of acoustic ecology to include studies by sound engineers and movie producers who are trying to establish a sense of urban place by capturing the sounds that might best typify an entire city. He introduces the reader to some of his own empirical research on sound, including soundwalks in London, in an attempt to identify unique sound signatures of various neighborhoods. In Lisbon, Portugal, he uses tape recordings and student volunteers' reaction to the urban sounds using word clouds to visualize the sonic results where the chirping of pet canaries, the babble of voices in public spaces, and the clatter of trams seem to predominate. For Austin, Texas, where the most extensive sound studies were conducted, Wissmann uses a variety of quantitative and qualitative techniques to measure the physical characteristics of sound, especially its loudness as measured in decibels in various neighborhoods within the city as well as the human reaction to the sounds within selected areas ranging from relatively quiet residential neighborhoods and green spaces to noisy areas of mixed land use replete with a cacophony of traffic and construction.

Chapter 4 (“Use of Sound in the City”) is the most extensive chapter of the book. It focuses on two interesting aspects of Austin's sonic environment and a study of neighborhood reaction around the city of Frankfurt, Germany, to a proposed new runway path at the nearby international airport. The airport study is carefully constructed and his results accord well with other research on the location of controversial and not-in-my-backyard facilities in the United States, although that voluminous body of literature is seldom cited. Not surprisingly, those neighborhoods in the direct flight path of the planes landing and taking off from the airport are the most bothered and annoyed by the sound of jet engines and the closer and lower the planes approach or depart from the airport runways, the more annoyed people in those affected neighborhoods become. On the other hand, those neighborhoods that have “dodged the bullet” and are not directly impacted by the flight path of approach and departure from the new runway, are the most content with their sonic environment.

A logical extension of Wissmann's research would be a more decidedly political economy and critical social perspective on the machinations and power relationships embedded in the decision to build the new runway where it is and, conversely, what surrounding neighborhoods were spared or avoided altogether and why. Wissmann and a colleague have followed up the initial Frankfurt study by examining the impacts of the new runway on property values as well as on outmigration from the most negatively impacted neighborhoods. I wish that those results could have been included in this volume.

Chapter 4 makes it clear that Wissmann's postdoctoral stay at the University of Texas in Austin working with Leo Zonn, Paul Adams, and others, was a most productive one. Three interesting aspects of the sonic environment in Austin are examined. The first is the use of audio tours in indoor environments such as museums and art galleries, including the role of the narrative and the fact that most users do not listen to every prerecorded stop. Sticking with sound in indoor settings, Wissmann examined the role of silence and hushed tones to create a sense of the sacred in church settings. He conducted interviews with clergy, choir directors, and others in downtown Austin churches about their views on sounds including sacred music and silences and their supposed impact on their worshipping congregations. What is missing here is an examination of the impact of those sounds and silences on the perception of the sacred among the presumptively affected parishioners themselves. The author also studied the use of audio tours in outdoor environments. Wissmann attempts to gauge the use of, and reaction to, audio walking tours of the city and of other outdoor venues (e.g., the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center) where the narrative signal of the tour is sometimes competing with the background noise of the surrounding urban environment. Chapter 4 finishes with an examination of the ways in which music has been used to brand Austin as the “Live Music Capital of the World” and the impact of that music on nearby residential neighborhoods, especially during festival times such as the famous South by Southwest Festival. Also examined are the noise ordinances that specifically exempt music played outdoors during such festivals unless it is really loud and annoying, which is, of course, always in the ear of the listener.

Chapter 5 is titled “Excursus: The Medial Creation of the City in Audio Drama.” The excursus in this case is an examination of two different audio dramas that are apparently very popular in Germany. Curiously, Wissmann does not probe more deeply into the geography of this popularity. Why would Germany, a country with approximately 80 million people, sell more audio dramas than any other country? Wissmann compares two such audio dramas, which are both murder mysteries. One sounds like the Hardy Boys (“The Three Investigators”) set in the fictional town of Rocky Beach, California, and appears to be pitched at that same age demographic. The other (“Gabriel Burns”) is a science fiction drama more similar to the long-running BBC series Doctor Who, and pitched toward an older age group. Wissmann carefully documents the use of sound in each drama as an attempt to capture a sense of place. Never having heard either one of these serialized dramas, it was difficult for me to follow the detailed argument about the plot lines. I disagree with Wissmann, however, when he argues that audio dramas vis-à-vis audio books are much more satisfying in creating a sense of place. The author feels that the use of background sounds and several actors playing the various roles in the drama trumps the audio book with its single narrator reading all the parts without the added aural accoutrement. I feel strongly that sense of place is created in the mind of the listener by an author who is sensitive to the detail of time and space in his or her writing and a narrator who is adept at conveying in the spoken word the message that the author expresses on paper. The creation of a sense of place in the listener's mind's eye is a phenomenon that should, in my opinion, have been explored to a greater extent by a researcher wedded to the phenomenological method. The creative mind can imagine a place or even create entire worlds through words alone. The question of the drama's impact on the listener and whether the inclusion of a soundtrack enhances or, in some cases, even stifles the enjoyment of the narrative can only be interrogated by interviewing listeners themselves. Perhaps a comparative research protocol should have been employed. Individuals could have been asked to listen to the same written material presented in the form of an audio book and as an audio drama. The reactions of listeners to each form of aural narrative could then have been evaluated for memory retention, degree to which a sense of place was evoked, and other geographically relevant questions by the use of guided phenomenological interviews.

The final chapter (“Sound Is the City”) is a summary of all the material that has proceeded it and the chapter title is a straightforward statement of the author's underlying thesis. Sound is not just part of the city; sound is the city.

Are there shortcomings in the volume? Yes, but they are cancelled out by the largely groundbreaking and exploratory nature of this important topic. As acoustic ecologist R. M. Schafer (1994) has stated, “The sense of hearing cannot be closed off at will. There are no earlids” (11). Schafer was writing in 1994, but in 2014, with digital technologies, there really is the equivalent of earlids. Technology has allowed us to construct a simulacrum of earlids—the earbuds and headphones seen on every college campus and in most public spaces. These devices create private worlds of sound that may be unique and pleasant for the individual users. In the process of tuning out their surrounding acoustic environments, however, people might have lost an opportunity to engage in the sonic world that surrounds them. Not all urban sounds are annoying or unpleasant. Even if the sounds we hear in cities are occasionally disruptive, some are quite important and even potentially lifesaving, such as auditory warning signals from emergency vehicles, police cars, fire trucks, or tornado warning devices.

I do, however, wholeheartedly concur with a statement by Wissmann that “language seems to be insufficient for fully communicating place” (p. 229). I would also add that sound is also similarly deficient, and so are the visual or the olfactory or the tactile sense alone. It is the interaction and blending together of these sensory receptors in the act of kinesthesia that comprises our phenomenal experience with landscape. Just as there are soundscapes, there are also smellscapes, an area of research pursued by geographer J. D. Porteous and most recently in the Smell and the City Project in the Unite Kingdom. As Wissmann correctly points out, “what we taste, smell, touch, hear and see depends on us alone” (p. 235). So instead of treating the sense receptors separately, I would argue for more research on kinesthesia—the way in which the senses blend together to form our unique sense of the world and our place in it.

Finally, for a book that sells for approximately US$110, there are entirely too many typographical and grammatical errors. Some of the problems might stem from the fact that Wissmann's first language is not English, but I doubt that is a major issue. Despite the disconcerting errors that a thorough proofreading would have improved on, Wissmann has written an important book on an oft-neglected subject that deserves wide circulation within the discipline of geography and beyond.