Sounds in the city: bridging the gaps from research to practice through soundscape workshops

ABSTRACT

Sound has been relatively underrepresented in urban design considerations, especially the positive aspects of sound. Yet, a vast body of academic literature on urban soundscape could inform professionals. We report on workshops with iterative improvements, designed to bring soundscape research to practice. The two workshops were conducted as part of the Sounds in the City partnership, in collaboration with the City of Montreal. Different workshop formats are compared, and recommendations are furnished both in terms of promoting awareness of the role of urban sound and with the intent of informing similar knowledge mobilization activities for researchers in related environmental fields.

View correction statement:

Correction

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Romain Dumoulin, Florian Grond, Kaisa Tikkanen and the Goethe-Institut Montreal, Annelies Bockstael (Co-P.I., PDGrant), Cynthia Tarlao, Martijn Lugten, Johannes Scherzer, Chris Trudeau, and all of the workshop presenters for their efforts in making the workshops possible; Edda Bild and Katharine Lusk for assistance with the theoretical framework and editing; and CIRMMT, SIS and the ITHQ for generous use of their facilities. The authors would like to thank Initiative on Cities at Boston University for their input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/ruespietonnes/.

Additional information

Funding

The project is supported by research grants from Canada’s SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) # 430-2016-01198 (Insight Development Grant) and # 890-2017-0065 (Partnership Development Grant) to Catherine Guastavino (P.I.).