Ambient sound assessment of urban environments:: field studies in two French cities

This work aims to investigate the appraisal of typical urban soundscapes. The method consists of two simultaneous on-site procedures in various urban situations in two French cities (main thorough fares, pedestrian precincts, playgrounds and market squares). While passers-by were required to express their opinion about soundscapes through questionnaires, we recorded samples of ambient sound environments and calculated acoustic parameters. The cross analysis between survey data and acoustic parameters indicated the sound level is appropriate to the description of main thorough fares, but for similar sound level locations (square, market, or playground) two further perceptive factors were remind. The perceptual spatial dimension was correlated with acoustic indicators as background noise or standard deviation of short L-Aeq, whereas the temporal dimension revealed differences in the perceptual attitudes of the survey respondents. The results obtained consequently identified the limitation of matching a unique acoustic descriptor with two cognitive representations (a global point of view versus a discrete listening) of the same acoustic phenomenon. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.