Soundscape, engagement and spatial planning : an exploration of perceived control, annoyance, indirect health outcomes and wellbeing in the context of UK aviation expansion projects

The sound environment directly affects human health and wellbeing. Essential to soundscape design, management and implementation in spatial planning are people’s perceptual responses to the existing and/or imagined sound environment. Internationally standardised soundscape practice places stakeholders as co-specifiers of projects from the planning inception stage, but crucially challenging to assessing/predicting stakeholders’ response to sound is the impact of non-acoustic factors, accounting for at least one-third of the human response to sound in context. The non-acoustic factor of ‘perceived control’ critically influences person-environment spacetime interaction/s, making it essential to physical and mental health, while perception of engagement in spatial planning substantially impacts stakeholders’ perceived control. This qualitative study explores perceived control and engagement in the context of spatial planning for UK aviation activities. Constructivist grounded theory methodology was used while data collection comprised of a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus groups, stakeholder engagement activities and autoethnographic observations. Three project outputs were delivered. First, the emergent Grounded Theory from the data conceptualising a trauma informed response to contextually salient and relevant non-acoustic factors and the impact on perceived control and engagement. Next, a Conceptual Framework applying the Grounded Theory to environmental impact assessment. Third, recommendations and implications of the outputs to inform salutogenic spatial planning were considered for aviation and for large and small infrastructure projects. This project builds on existing soundscape, transportation noise and health research adding a novel applied Grounded Theory to the corpus. Finally, a dimensional evolvement of stress-related noise annoyance theory is posited regarding perceived control and the impact on wellbeing.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/R003467/

Using a soundscape approach to develop an acoustic ecology plan for a city

Sounding Brighton is a collaborative project exploring practical approaches toward better soundscapes focusing on soundscape issues related to health, quality of life, and restorative functions of the environment. The project provides the opportunity to raise awareness and promote communication on soundscapes among the general public, stakeholders and those involved in policy, including encouraging exploration of new ways of listening in local soundscapes, and new ways of tackling noise and improving local soundscape quality. The project is working to provide opportunities to discuss how soundscape concepts might, alongside tackling conventional noise problems, contribute to local planning and environmental improvement as part of a city wide engagement process in the city of Brighton and Hove in England in the United Kingdom. A range of environments, e.g., seafront, foreshore, historic terraces, squares, lanes, parks, and gardens, are being considered. A soundmap of the city is being developed utilizing the Swedish Soundscape-Quality Protocol (developed by Osten Axelsson, Mats E Nilsson and Birgitta Berglund); a public outreach exhibition is being developed; and a night noise intervention study is planned to explore the relationship between soundscapes and the brain, community well being, social cohesion, and the physical and mental health of individuals

Considering ‘non-acoustic factors’ as social and environmental determinants of health equity and environmental justice. Reflections on research and fields of action towards a vision for environmental noise policies

Despite being an overall objective of European policies, health equity and environmental justice have not yet been systematically implemented in environmental policies. Taking control over one’s environment as an element of health equity, we consider intractable exposure to transportation noise as a highly relevant policy field. The European Environmental Noise Directive is designed as a sectoral policy dealing with one environmental health determinant (noise) and drawing on the Global Burden of Disease framework, whereas health equity demands an investigation of the manifold variations in the population by combining adverse noise exposure with salutogenetic (psycho-)social and environmental resources. Such resources or the lack thereof have been referred to as ‘non-acoustic factors’ in noise- and soundscape-related research and can presumably account for vulnerability to transportation noise exposure caused by social and environmental determinants. Thus, we aim to link the current discourse on ‘non-acoustic factors’ with health equity driven by the need to go beyond average exposure–response-relations. After summarising challenges of environmental noise-related health impact assessment from a health equity perspective, we focus on residents’ control – both procedurally and environmentally – to illustrate how social and environmental determinants can cause vulnerability. We advocate to consider ‘non-acoustic factors’ as leverage to promote health equity and environmental justice through three fields of potential action: (1) developing a theoretical and methodological groundwork and multi/interdisciplinary training of students and professionals, (2) introducing comprehensible information and inclusive participation methods, and (3) creating supportive institutional frames and governance modes. The contents of this paper were derived from a workshop held at the University of Bremen in September 2020