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The Importance of Place: Sound in the City

In document Sound and the City (pagina 49-53)

6 Findings

6.3 Urban Sound, Quietness and the Context of Experience

6.3.1 The Importance of Place: Sound in the City

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& Muer, 2006). The way urban sound and quietness are experienced and evaluated in relation to different contexts, will be further discussed in the following chapter.

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Soundmarks: acoustic characteristics of two city districts

As mentioned in the theoretical chapter, the home is an especially important environment for its restorative functions, such as the “diversity of options for self-selected adaptive behaviour”

(Andringa & Lanser, 2013, p. 1445) and for a sense of safety and comfort, thus feeling at home (Duyvendak, 2011). In other words, the home should be place where people can experience quietness, unwind and recharge and be in charge of their own mind-states and preferred activities.

Many participants, from both districts, described their homes as quiet, or at least relatively quiet or quiet enough. The quietness of participants’ homes was not only judged or established in terms of volume, but also through the presence of appropriate sounds that are in harmony with the setting. For most participants, appropriate sounds at home were naturally or typically there, such as background sounds of neighbours, people calmly chatting or walking past, far-away sounds of traffic or construction, birds singing and other ‘natural’ sounds.

However, what was named as appropriate, natural or typical sounds at home and in the neighbourhood, differed between the two city districts. These different soundmarks of Centrum and Nieuw West district display some of the different acoustic characteristics between these two spatial contexts.

The soundmarks named as typical sounds for the neighbourhood in Amsterdam Centrum were often numerous and varied, representing the cacophonic and somewhat chaotic characteristic of the city centre. Asked to name some of the Centrum’s typical sounds, Annabelle (50) mentions: “boat sounds, or sounds from groups of tourists, chattering people, lots of international voices, or a bunch of partying, frolicsome, bawling and shouting people, on their bikes or in cars honking and driving past, euphoric-mood sounds are really typical for Centrum. And the Westertoren, of course”. Other participants also emphasised the lively and boisterous sounds of the city centre, usually attributed to tourists and partygoers, or patrons of the bountiful hospitality venues and pub terraces. Other typical, but more mechanic sounds were those of traffic such as people ringing their bicycle bells, cars or mopeds driving past (often too fast). But most commonly, the tram was mentioned as typical and iconic for the city of Amsterdam. For Maud (52) who lives near Leidseplein, the sound of the tram even signalled a sense of comfort or familiarity, one that remained after many other sounds in her neighbourhoods had disappeared or changed during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Other sounds that installed a similar sense of place and ‘feeling at home’, were the sounds of church bells, coming from some of the many old churches in Centrum, such as Westertoren and Zuiderkerk. As Inge (24 ) explains: “Well we live near the Zuiderkerk here and I just really like that sound, that

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clock, (…) it gives me a sense of home, because I got so used to it now (…) and it’s also a sense of pride that we live near a church, it’s not that I’m religious or anything, but I like to live in a historic city centre where there are old churches around”. Similarly, Renske (74) states: “I really enjoy that sound [of the Zuiderkerk] and it has something… that I think ‘yes I really live here on the Zeedijk’, dat is a great reminder for me, that I live here right in the city centre”.

The churchbells remind these participants of the city they live in, and installs in them a sense of security, a sense of comfort and pride. These statements revealed that many participants were proud of living in Amsterdam Centrum and that there is a postive mental image attached to its historic centre. The church bells remind them of the their good fortune of being able to live there, and the sounds characterize Amsterdam and the place they call home. Similar to this sense of pride, to Herman (51) the church bells also signal the uniqueness of Centrum, ans serve almost as an anchor: “I really like the sound of the churchbells (…) it reminds me that I live in a really old city, a really old city with its roots in the 16th and 17th century, And when you can’t sleep at night and you hear those ancient sounds it really gives peace of mind compared to the agitations of the daytime, you can feel the calmness of time going by, that’s all in those churchbells”.

The soundmarks of Nieuw West, in contrast, are much more centred around traffic and sound coming from neighbours or other locals. Participants usualy named cars, buses, trams and sirens as the most typical for their neighbourhoods, especially for those that lived on or nearby busy roads. “you mainly hear traffic here, a lot of cars (…) and luckily also children playing on the square out front and people shopping there, and on Wednesdays there’s a market on so that’s always pleasant (…) but the first thing that comes to mind is really the traffic, we also have two hospitals nearby so we hear the sirens and ambulances a lot, and also airplains, when they use a certain landing strip you kan hear it louder, certainly louder than in any other part of the city” (Ron, 31). In contrast, other typical sounds of Nieuw West, such as the sounds of casual interaction between neighbours or locals, were often described as pleasant, cozy (“gezellig”), familiar, neighbourly or comforting. Much more than in Centrum, the voices particpants heard on the street were attributed to local residents, rather than tourists, eventhough these people too often spoke in other languages than Dutch. These voices represent the multi-cultural character of Nieuw West, with 53% of its residents coming from a non-western migration background2. Interestingly, although the often unpleasant sound from traffic that is

2 Terminology ‘non-western’ taken directly from the Amsterdam Municipal website Gebied in Beeld, accessed via: https://gebiedinbeeld.amsterdam.nl/#/dashboard?gebied=F&wijk&buurt&thema=Bevolking

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so prevalent in Nieuw West, neighbourhoods were often described as ‘much quieter than Centrum’. This seems unexpected, since quietness is often described in combination with more organic rather than mechanic sounds and the presence of traffic noise would thus stand in the way of quietness. However, the following statements by Nieuw West residents Tamara (17) and Bram (30) clarify it: “because it is so much quieter here, sounds from airplanes are just much more noticable, it’s just more annoying because it stands out, rather than it being a part of a more constant din as in Centrum”. Similarly: “you could say it is really noisy here, but when you go towards the city centre you notice it’s relatively quiet here, the noise is just more noticable here exactly because it is generally quieter”. These examples confirm that noise or quietness is always a subjective and relative experience, thus highly sensitive to context (Booteldooren, De Coensel & Muer, 2006, p. 2). It is thus not enough to jugde an area’s acoustic quality based on solely sound wave levels. An area might objectively be louder than another, but might not be experienced as such. Conversely, people in quiet areas might experience higher levels of noise annoyance, just because the noise stands out in exception.

Sound of the city: what does Amsterdam sound like?

In addition to naming soundmarks of their city districts, participants in both city districs were also asked to name some typical sounds of the city overall, the sounds that come to mind when they think of Amsterdam. However, many participants that thought about Amsterdam as a whole seemed to envision the city centre. The sounds that are typically ‘Amsterdams’, often overlapped with what was described as typical for the Centrum district. Along the cacophonic and lively characteristic discussed earlier, Amsterdam is also regarded as relatively noisy by participants from both city districts. Interestingly, the noisiness of Amsterdam was often more negatively evaluated by residents of Nieuw West than by residents of Centrum.

A partial explanation for this finding might be that when thinking about the sounds of Amsterdam overall, participants from Nieuw West district were much more focussed on traffic noise. And as noted before, these mechanic sounds of traffic are more often experienced as noise. The sounds these participants experienced most notably in their own neighbourhoods, such as cars, busses and motorcycles, were also reflected in their sonic experience in the city as a whole. For example by Youssef (31), who lives in an apartment on the Cornelis Lelylaan, a busy road that connects large parts of the Nieuw West district: “I would say typically Amsterdam are definitely the sounds of mopeds, there’s a lot of those, and the tram of course, the busses, taxi’s, cars, just a lot of traffic and very busy”. Similarly, Tom (22), who also lives near a traffic-heavy road, states: “when I think about the city of Amsterdam I think of honking

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and shrill sounds, and the constant sound of people driving past. I mean, people drive past here as well, but in Centrum that is just constantly happening”.

In contrast Centrum residents seemed more forgiving towards the noise of the city. A recurring sentiment towards sound in Amsterdam is that noise is simply a part of living in a city, something people should expect to encounter and live with, especially in the city centre.

Varieties of the phrase “het hoort erbij” (“it’s part of it”, “it’s a fact of life”), were very common in the interviews with Centrum residents, seemingly illustrating a high level of acceptance of urban sound and noise, although reluctantly in some cases and more appreciative in others.

These participants often mentioned they realised the city could be noisy before they moved there, but chose to live their anyway. Overall, these Centrum residents focussed more on the lively sounds of the city, and took into account that the busyness of the city centre was typically urban and contributed to a thriving economy and overall success of many businesses and cultural institutions, such as shops, restaurants, clubs or museums. This can also partly be explained by the fact that residents of Centrum, in contrast to those living in Nieuw West, experience the relatively quiet moments in the city too. Residents might have access to quiet back gardens or balconies might experience the Centrum at quieter times, such as early mornings and nights. These quiet moments in combination with an appreciation of the city’s amenities, help appreciate the overall acoustic environments.

Overall these findings show the importance of place. Not only does the physical space in which we experience sound influence our appreciation of it, also the imagined space, or our mental representations of that space matter in the evaluation of sound and the city.

In document Sound and the City (pagina 49-53)