Is a Noisy City Sustainable?

Antonella Radicchi (Technical University of Berlin)

Although noise is the second most harmful environmental stressor following air pollution, it is rather overlooked in policy addressing sustainable urban environments. For instance, noise is not directly addressed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. On the other hand, the World Health Organization has recently confirmed that noise can also be regarded as a health risk: therefore, in its guiding principles the WHO recommends noise reduction and quiet areas conservation, in parallel to involving affected communities. Whereas the implementation of noise mitigation measures is an established practice, regulated by national and international policies, a proper methodology, which applies qualitative criteria to identify and protect urban quiet areas, still constitutes an open question, especially at the European policy level. This presentation illustrates methods, findings and impact of a novel, participatory framework - the Hush City - launched in 2017 to identify, evaluate and plan urban quiet areas, by applying the soundscape paradigm and citizen science. In detail the presentation discusses:

1) State of the art of methods developed to identify and map urban quiet areas, so as to explain the framework's originality. 2) On-field mixed methods applied by participants, by using a new citizen science mobile app: i.e. field recording, noise measurement, picture capturing and a predefined questionnaire addressing subjective responses to environmental quality. 3) Original results, consisting of 1400+ urban quiet areas crowdsourced worldwide by 300+ participants in 170+ cities worldwide. 4) Its impact on participation, environmental planning and policy, through the case of Berlin where the framework was exploited by the Municipality of Berlin to prepare the new Plan of Quiet Areas (2018-2023), in response to the requirements of the European Environmental Noise Directive (49/2002).

In conclusion, the framework's replicability is explained so as to highlight its potential contribution to the design of sustainable urban environments.