Soundscape and social relationships in urban public spaces

‘Soundscape’ is defined as the acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/ or understood in context by a person or people. In the context of urban public spaces, activities can be varied among different social relationship groups which might influence their requirements for soundscape.
Four studies were carried out in urban public squares of Suzhou, China, and Sheffield and London, UK to explore the mechanism between soundscape and social relationships. Behavioural observations (study 1) and interviews with Grounded Theory (study 2) were used to explore types of relationship in relation to their patterns of use and the public’s perceptual structure of soundscape in urban public spaces. A questionnaire (study 3) then investigated how companion factors, compared with other demographic factors, influence soundscape evaluation. Finally, study 4 used survey and observations to explore how social willingness levels of various social relationship types might be enhanced through soundscape design.
Three types of social relationship were categorized and ranked by relationship intensities: Intimate Pair, Intimate Group and Social Group. People with closer relationships participate multiple activities at once and involve more social interactions. Grounded Theory generated four elements of soundscape, which form a three- level process: sound classifications- sound appraisals (sound features and psychological reactions)- and judgment (sound preferences). Companion factors were suggested to influence soundscape evaluations comparing to other demographic factors: closer groups tended to evaluate socially interactive sounds more positively. Human sounds and event sounds, as two kinds of socially interactive sounds, were both found to stimulate social willingness while event sounds negatively affect soundscape suitability. A balance between suitability and stimulation should be achieved to enhance sociability, especially for closer groups.
Results from this study give guidance for future urban public soundscape research addressing sound preferences of various relationship types. This study included a limited choice of urban public spaces and cities, and social relationships were limited to relationship intensities. Future research should consider methods such as face recognition and deep learning to more-efficiently recognize relationship types and sociability of urban public spaces.