Citizens as smart, active sensors for a quiet and just city: the case of the “open source soundscapes” approach to identify, assess and plan “everyday quiet areas” in cities

Today the so-called “smart city” is connoted by massive implementation of novel, digital technology, which is often considered as the best solution to global issues affecting contemporary cities. Sophisticated and low-cost technological solutions are developed also in the field of noise monitoring and they are expected to play an important role for acousticians, city planners and policy makers. However, the “smart city” paradigm is controversial: it relies on advanced technological solutions, yet it fails to consider the city as a social construct and it often overlooks the role of citizens, in the quest for technological advances and novel methods. This is especially true in the field of smart acoustic solutions addressing the issue of urban quiet areas: main methods and technologies developed so far barely involve citizens and consider their preferences. This contribution tackles this challenge, by illustrating a novel mixed methodology, which combines the soundscape approach, the citizen science paradigm and a novel mobile application – the Hush City app – with the ultimate goal of involving people in identifying, assessing and planning urban quiet areas. Firstly, the theoretical background and the methods applied are described; secondly initial findings are discussed; thirdly potential impact and future work are outlined

Citizen science mobile apps for soundscape research and public spaces studies: lessons from the Hush City project

Highlights • Mobile apps have been increasingly developed as participatory tools within the context of citizen science projects on environmental noise. However, fewer apps for the combined identification and assessment of quiet areas have been developed. • Public quiet areas can be essential for healthy cities, being key to counterbalancing the detrimental e!ects of noise pollution on human health, biodiversity and the environment. • The free citizen science Hush City app, released in 2017, enables users to create an open access map of quiet areas, with the potential of orientating plans and policies for healthier living. • Drawing on the experience of the Hush City app, 15 people-centred recommendations are proposed potentially to inform the design, build and use of citizen science mobile apps in soundscape research and public spaces studies, aimed at generating a greater health related quality of life

Sull'immagine sonora della città

The dissertation deals with the contemporary city soundscape and fits into the disciplinary field of sensuous urbanism, soundscape studies and emotional geography. The key term, soundscape, is to be understood as all the sounds that surround us, as a perceptual theme, that is, object of a subject's perception, in its sense of 'landscape' including the metaphorical meaning of an emotional or mnemonic emotional soundscape. The dissertation is structured in two parts: the first and second chapters define the disciplinary spheres of sensory urbanism and soundscape studies, while the third and fourth chapters explore the forms that classical sound environment analysis and planning tools take on within the aforesaid disciplinary fields. Finally, the conclusions give a methodological indication aimed at favouring the integration of soundscape studies within the town planning discipline, and propose «tender sound map» and «sound niche» operating tools to help achieve the goal of planning the contemporary city's physical and sound spaces at the same time

Abitare l’utopia oggi: la città digitale. Saragozza: il miglio digitale

At first sight, the city of Zaragoza, one of the most ancient cities in Spain, would seem like the most unlikely place to conduct an experiment using digital technologies. Instead, the recent arrival of the high speed train has made possible the development of a technologically innovative project that is bringing the city into the Information Age. Known as the Milla Digital, the project aims to add digital technology to the everyday activities that take place in public spaces, making those spaces capable of giving information and providing meaningful experiences for everyone who would like to live and learn in Zaragoza. What the project is going to accomplish is the creation of a new kind of space that is both public and private, called “Open-Source City”. The hope is that this project will create an interactive relationship between the static form of the city and the vibrant desires of the citizens triggering a revolutionary process

Planning Artificial Light at Night for Pedestrian Visual Diversity in Public Spaces

This article makes the case for addressing pedestrian visual diversity when planning artificial light for public spaces at night, by drawing upon original findings from an exploratory study where twenty-one open-ended interviews were conducted with experts in the fields of artificial lighting, urban planning and health studies. Specifically, this article provides (1) the introduction of the concept of pedestrian visual diversity, defined as the condition, capabilities and needs of visually impaired pedestrians, (2) a systematization of overlooked issues in the planning of artificial light for visual diverse pedestrians in public spaces and (3) the proposition of a participatory framework for the application of lightwalks as an experiential method for involving visual diverse pedestrians in the data collection on and analysis of artificial lighting in public spaces at night. In conclusion, it identifies five strands for further research at the nexus of pedestrian visual diversity, public space and night studies for inclusive light planning

Forest Hills Gardens. Il grande sogno americano delle città giardino, 100 anni dopo

The great american dream of city garden, 100 years after. April, 2008. After having caught a glimpse of the future, working at M.I.T. on digital urban utopias, I left for New York City looking for history. There, at the beginning of the XX century, the first planned suburban community, based on the Garden City ideals, were born: Forest Hills Gardens and Sunny Side Gardens in the Queens, and Radburn in the Fair Lawn, New Jersey. A completely different urban concept compared to the classical ones, based on the American grid; a concept that would have solved all “the machine age” problems, it was said at that time; a concept that would have affected all the urban planning from that time forward, it is said today

Smells, well-being and the built environment

In this Research Topic, we aimed to collect a range of contributions to understand the emotional and wellbeing responses resulting from smells in different public spaces (museums, highstreets, heritage buildings, food districts, neighborhoods, squares, etc.) to inform future spatial design and management. The articles in this Research Topic are presented according to three types of contributions: reviews and conceptual analyses, empirical research in fieldwork, in laboratory studies and technological applications. Reviews and Conceptual Analyses Xiao et al. reviewed smellscape research studies conducted in the past 10 years to identify the challenges and related areas of future research, namely smell archives and databases, social justice within odor control and management, and research into advanced building materials. Spence reviewed the changing role of smells in the built environment from negative associations with sanitation to meaningful personal and cultural associations with memories and experiences which led to an evaluation of different approaches in examining the impact of smells on people's mood or wellbeing and the challenges of researching smells in the multi-sensory environment. Moving from the sick building sydrome to sick transport sydrome, Spence further reviewed the smells in transport environments as aesthetic and functional, and suggests challenges for future transportation to produce a more tangible vision to integrate smells in the design process to achieve the right balance of olfactory stimulation. Looking backwards to scented past, Bembibre and Strlič make the case for the need of knowledge exchange and interdisciplinary interpretation of findings in the field of olfactory heritage, providing an overview of methodological and museal studies as well as challenges associated with historical scent reconstruction. Empirical Research - Fieldwork Pálsdóttir et al. carried out a field study with participants suffering from stress-related mental disorders and explored how they would describe their smellscape perception of a garden in the context of a nature-based rehabilitation intervention. In a different field study, de Groot investigated whether ambient scents could affect customers' subjective experience and spending behavior in an experiment with customers of a second-hand clothing store. The author concluded that for that to happen, the smellscape should have a meaningful link to the physical context. Masaoka et al. present the results of a study conducted to examine whether continuous odor stimuli associated with autobiographical memories could activate olfactory areas in the brain of older adults and assess whether this odor stimulation could have a protective effect against age-related cognitive decline. Empirical Research - Laboratory Studies and Technological Applications Masaoka et al. investigated the potential protective effect from age-related cognitive decline of continuous odor stimuli associated with autobiographical memories and whether those could activate the above olfactory areas in older adults. Jiang et al. used blood pressure, pulse rate, EEG, POMS, and SD data to examine the odor-visual effects of the Primula forbesii Franch compared with the non-fragrant Primula malacoides Franch on the physiological and psychological state of Chinese female college students in the indoor environment. Courrèges et al. examined the correlations between odor and texture in users' perceptions of cosmetic creams cross-culturally, in laboratory conditions, using questionnaires, minimizing the impacts of branded messages from the packing and retail spaces. Amores et al. discussed the design and technical implementation of Essence- a smartphone-controlled wearable device that monitors users' EEG and real-time sleep staging algorithm to release scents to interact with users- in home-based sleep environments. The articles included in this Research Topic represent a nice balance between the theoretical reviews, empirical studies and laboratory research, showing the vibrance and dynamic in this research field as well as new technological developments such as extended reality, emotional sensors (i.e. EEG, GSR) and odor monitoring devices. New insights are drawn into the theoretical frameworks to understand relationships between smells, wellbeing and emotions, behaviors and physiological aspects; methodological approaches to measure smell triggered emotions, experiences, and quality of life; practical explorations on the process and challenges of using smells to influence user experiences in the built environment

Mutual learning exercise on citizen science initiatives: policy and practice. Second thematic report: ensuring good practices and impacts

This publication provides a summary of the Mutual Learning Exercise on Good Practices on Citizen Science and their Impact. This document starts by presenting the examples of successful CS national projects chosen by the 11 countries participating in the MLE, and the variables against which the projects were analysed. Chapter 2 summarises the results related to challenges & mitigation strategies with the implementation of CS projects. Chapter 3 analyses the examples of CS networks and centres of expertise and presents the current state of national funding opportunities that were provided by the 11 participating countries in the MLE. Chapter 4 provides recommendations which cover a range of potential actions targeting different aspects discussed during the workshop sessions to better implement and especially support CS initiatives and projects and overcome the detected barriers. The document concludes with Chapter 5 which briefly explains the next MLE topic sessions

Proactive Sensory Urban Design

Nowadays we see a growing interest in how urban design and planning practices can bring in the sensory dimension of the built environment to contribute to the creation of more sustainable and healthy cities. However, as the literature shows, there is little applied research in practices that can be referred to as examples of (multi)sensory urbanism as well as tools and techniques that can be leveraged by professionals. Against this backdrop, this article aims to contribute to this line of inquiry by providing guidelines / a toolkit for designing public spaces with sound and smell, grounding on the analysis of best practices where sound and smell are treated not as pollutants but as resources for creating quality urban environments. These selected projects are taking an appreciative approach providing either innovative solutions or temporary experiences to create new urban values through senses. By analysing the best practices, we ultimately aim to follow a change in perspective, moving from a reactive design approach (to abate the pollutants) to proactively promoting the quality of the sonic and smell environments