Dr.M.Banu Chitra

Impact of landscape elements in the soundscape of Urban parks

GIS, Urban sound mapping with Norsonic 140 sound level meter,SPSS

Urban sound mapping and detailed study on the impact of different landscape elements on urban sounds

Urban parks are always regarded as the relief to the congested urban environment. They act as a breakout space for the urban population and also act as a high quality habitat for biodiversity.Theyplaya vital role in observing andexperiencing nature. However based on experience, visual experience is always considered as the dominant factor in context to the natural environment. As a result ofincreasedurbanisation, theexploration on the possibilities of tranquil recreation in urban environment creates the positive effect on the quality of urbanpopulation. This can be achieved by understanding and characterising the sonic environment in such recreational environment. The research concerns towards understanding the sonic environment of parksin order to retainpositive sounds is limited in context to Indian whereas researchconcerning noise control measures newlineare addressed. This creates a significant knowledge gap among the research of landscape and soundscape studies.In view of the above, the research is aimed at developing the detailed framework to create positive soundscape by evaluating the influence of landscape elements in creating desirable sonic environmentof urban parks.This research is focussed to addressfour objectives as, the first one newlineconcerns the characterisation of soundscape perception using various landscapes and soundscape parameters. The second one relates to the evaluation of physical composition of landscape elements and its impact on soundscape perception. The third and fourth objectivesare linked to the derivation newlineof guidelines and recommendations for creating positive soundscape in urban parks and evolving the simplified detailed framework for mapping and analysing the soundscape of urban parks respectively.

The present research was conducted on the limited to the 2D mapping of the soundscape.Moreover the case study and data collected are limited for generalizing of results to different climatic conditions. Also the study is limited to organic landscape elements in the context of urban parks. However the future research has to be carried on 3D mapping of soundscape in the urban scenario. Further the research can be extended to understand the impact of other landscape elements as different footpath materials, soil, seating, hoardings, etc, which is not discussed in this study. Besides, the identification of cultural values of soundscape and its influence on people’s preferences need to be studied. Future research can also be extended to explore the concepts of soundscape based on different climatic conditions and to identify the sound-marks of the cities in order to preserve them in an urban scale