scholarly journals Urban park soundscape in distinct sociocultural and geographical contexts

Noise Mapping ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Carlos Lobo Soares ◽  
J. Luis Bento Coelho

AbstractThe importance of soundscape in urban public parks has galvanised researchers concerned with improving the sound environment in cities. Existing literature reveals, however, a relative paucity of studies on soundscape in particular sociocultural and environmental contexts, and on the influence of these contexts in the perception of the urban sound space.Within this framework, this paper investigates the soundscape of parks in the cities of Belém, Brazil, and Lisbon, Portugal. The influence of geography and climate as determinant of activities and behaviors, the emission of natural and man-made sounds that characterise the soundscape of urban parks, the way park users evaluate the quality of sound environments were analysed, as were other elements that contribute for such an appreciation. The methodology encompassed sound measurements inside and outside the parks, analysis of the audibility of identifiable sound sources, study of local uses and activities through soundwalks and interviews, and assessment of responses to enquiries. The results shows that the soundscape of park depends on different features such as geography, climate, urban architecture, park infrastructure, sound sources, and most importantly the visitors’ expectations for the planned activities, together with their other sensorial responses, which proved to be different in distinct sociocultural and environmental contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2125
Author(s):  
Zening Xu ◽  
Xiaolu Gao ◽  
Zhiqiang Wang ◽  
Jie Fan

Urban parks play a key role in urban sustainable development. This paper proposes a method for the evaluation of public parks from the perspective of accessibility and quality. The method includes the data extraction of urban park locations and the delineation of urban built-up areas. The processing of urban park data not only involves the extraction from digital maps, but also the classification of urban parks using a semi-automated model in ArcGIS. The urban area is identified using the Point of Interest (POI) data in digital maps, taking economic and human activities into consideration. The service area and its overlapped time is included in the evaluation indicators. With a clear definition of park and urban built-up area, the evaluation result of urban parks is of great comparability. Taking China as an example, the quality of urban parks in 273 prefecture-level cities has been evaluated. The results show that the average service coverage of urban parks in Chinese cities is 64.8%, and that there are significant disparities between cities with different population sizes and locations. The results suggest the necessity to improve public parks in small-and-medium sized cities and inland areas to strengthen the coordination of urbanization and regional development.



Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1268
Author(s):  
Bayarmaa Enkhbold ◽  
Kenichi Matsui

Urban parks are essential for communities to maintain and improve health, culture, and quality of life. However, Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, faces a shortage of urban parks due to overpopulation and unplanned land use. A good community-based strategy can help urban park planners and decision-makers understand residents’ needs. It can also improve livability and the urban environmental conditions at large. This paper attempts to understand residents’ perceptions about participating in urban park establishment and maintenance. As the past studies showed a lack of community participation in urban planning in Ulaanbaatar, it attempts to determine the extent to which residents perceive urban park benefits, the importance of community participation, preferred types of contribution, and willingness to contribution land in establishing urban parks in their neighborhood. In doing so, it identifies socio-demographic factors that influence their willingness to participate and contribute. A total of 600 paper-based questionnaires were randomly distributed among ger and apartment residents, and only 535 were analyzed. The result shows that approximately 73% of the respondents considered community participation very important for establishing urban parks in their neighborhood. Most respondents perceived urban park benefits as playgrounds for children, and relaxation and recreation. Respondents’ education and housing type were found significant in overall willingness to participate in park establishment and maintenance, whereas marital status and land size were observed statistically significant in the willingness of sharing some portions of their lands for park establishment in the ger area.



Author(s):  
Laura Estévez-Mauriz ◽  
Jens Forssén ◽  
Georgios Zachos ◽  
Wolfgang Kropp

The urban sound environment is one of the layers that characterizes a city, and several methodologies are used for its assessment, including the soundwalk approach. However, this approach has been tested mainly with adults. In the work presented here, the aim is to investigate a soundwalk methodology for children, analyzing the sound environment of five different sites of Gothenburg, Sweden, from children’s view-point, giving them the opportunity to take action as an active part of society. Both individual assessment of the sound environment and acoustic data were collected. The findings suggested that among significant results, children tended to rank the sound environment as slightly better when lower levels of background noise were present ( L A 90 ). Moreover, traffic dominance ratings appeared as the best predictor among the studied sound sources: when traffic dominated as a sound source, the children rated the sound environment as less good. Additionally, traffic volume appeared as a plausible predictor for sound environment quality judgments, since the higher the traffic volume, the lower the quality of the sound environment. The incorporation of children into urban sound environment research may be able to generate new results in terms of children’s understanding of their sound environment. Moreover, sound environment policies can be developed from and for children.



2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamirah Rosli ◽  
Oliver Hoon Leh Ling ◽  
Nurhazlin Amira Mohd Adzmi ◽  
Marlyana Azzyati Marzukhi

Nowadays, people, especially urban dwellers were not active. Physical inactivity will lead to an unhealthy body. Previous research found that physical activity will contribute to a healthy life. Based on the previous research, high-quality recreation areas, including urban parks and playgrounds can provide a wide variety of opportunities for physical activity and have the potential to help community in leading a more active lifestyle. However, the statistical relationship between the quality of urban parks and physical activity is yet to be examined, especially for Malaysia. Due to the gap, a study was conducted in Changkat Public Park (Taman Awam Changkat), Batu Gajah, Perak Darul Ridzuan with the aim to examine the statistical relationship between quality of the urban park and physical activity. The park quality was evaluated based on five (5) aspects which were facilities and amenities, accessibility, informative (signage), safety, as well as attraction. Pertaining to physical activity, this study focussed on time allocation, as well as frequency and type of activity of the park visitors. Data were obtained through a questionnaire survey among visitors. The relationship between urban park quality and physical activity in the study area was analysed using a correlation test. The study found that the quality of the park was moderately corrected to the active level of the respondents. As an implication, urban parks require serious concern by the designers and managers to uphold the quality for visitors.



Author(s):  
Nur Allia Mohamad ◽  
Hazreena Hussein

A restorative environment tells how certain types of environment help heals people mentally and physically, and many studies in the related field have drawn connection that natural and green places are more likely to be restorative to a person’s health, especially when compared those living in cities. In Kuala Lumpur, rapid urbanization and previous poor city planning result in residents becoming increasingly susceptible to mental fatigue and urban stress. Residents frequent for the very few urban parks available as a place to restore themselves, thus the restorative qualities of the urban parks are critical to elevating the quality of life. This study investigates the theory of restorative environment and highlighting its criteria in the context of Kuala Lumpur, by analyzing an existing urban park as a case study: the Perdana Botanical Garden. The methods used include site observation, interview, and a questionnaire to evaluate the quality of the environment as well as user perception. Data from finding confirms the restorative theories as perceived by users and its suggested space criteria and shows that most users come to the park as green therapy and to relieve stress and relax, as they find that the natural scenery and engaging landscaping inside the park are restorative to their overall well-being.



Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1233
Author(s):  
Shixian Luo ◽  
Jing Xie ◽  
Katsunori Furuya

Urban parks are essential parts of a city’s natural environment, and blue spaces of urban parks bring aesthetic and health benefits to people. However, the current blue spaces mainly focus on the marine environment or a giant water body scale at the urban or regional level. The urban park blue spaces (e.g., rivers, creeks, ponds) are relatively neglected. An experiment involving 10 different urban park blue spaces in Huanhuaxi park was conducted to assess urban park blue spaces’ aesthetic preference and restorative potential. The results indicated that (1) a water body with good water quality and natural visual form may be more attractive and have restorative potential; (2) blue spaces with high vegetation diversity are preferred, and artificial elements should be evaluated more carefully when added to the scene to avoid disharmony and conflict with the surrounding environment; (3) in practical design, the proportions of plants, buildings, topographical changes, and water should be coordinated to maintain the blue space’s landscape heterogeneity; (4) more leisure activities and interactions should be considered for better recovery; and (5) designers need to emphasize the balance of natural and man-made elements to enhance the visual quality of the water feature. This investigation is important for the management and development of leisure and natural resources in urban parks.



2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Spigel ◽  
Jessica A. Lin ◽  
Carly E. Milliren ◽  
Melissa Freizinger ◽  
Julia A. Vitagliano ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Shelter-in-place orders and social distancing guidelines, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, have limited traditional face-to-face interactions and led to many clinical providers transitioning to the use of videoconferencing platforms. The present study aims to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted adolescents’/young adults’ (AYA) eating disorder (ED)-related care, and how access to, changes in, perceived disruptions to, and quality of care are associated with ED thoughts and behaviors. Methods AYA enrolled in the RECOVERY study, a pre-existing web-based longitudinal study, and completed a COVID-19-specific survey (n = 89). We examined bivariate associations of four markers of care: i) access to care, ii) changes in care, iii) perceived disruption to care, and iv) quality of care. Using multiple logistic regression, we examined the associations of pandemic-related markers of care with changes in ED thoughts and behaviors. We excluded those not engaged in treatment pre-pandemic (n = 16). Results In the remaining 73 participants, reported access to care was high, with 92% of respondents continuing care with at least one ED provider during the pandemic; however, 47% stopped some treatment during the pandemic. Nearly one-third (32%) perceived a disruption in treatment. Quality of care remained high with 67% reporting care to be better than or as good as pre-pandemic. Respondents acknowledged heightened symptomatology: 81% reported increased ED thoughts and 81% reported increased ED behaviors due to COVID-19-related factors. However, none of the markers of care described were significantly associated with ED thoughts or behaviors in regression analyses adjusting for demographic variables and baseline characteristics, except our quality of care measure which was approaching significance (p = 0.07). Conclusions Our findings show the majority of AYA who had care prior to the pandemic continued receiving some element of their multi-disciplinary ED treatment and perceived their care as high quality. None of the markers of care described were statistically associated with increased ED thoughts and behaviors.



2010 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna J. Heymans ◽  
Kerry L. Howell ◽  
Morag Ayers ◽  
Michael T. Burrows ◽  
John D. M. Gordon ◽  
...  

Abstract Heymans, J. J., Howell, K. L., Ayers, M., Burrows, M. T., Gordon, J. D. M., Jones, E. G., and Neat, F. 2011. Do we have enough information to apply the ecosystem approach to management of deep-sea fisheries? An example from the West of Scotland. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 265–280. There is currently a global call for more use of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM), and ecosystem models such as Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) are being used to provide a holistic view of ecosystem–fisheries interactions. Although these can be useful for an EAFM, the relative paucity of data available for deep-sea ecosystems raises concerns whether we can effectively apply an EAFM to the deep sea. The deep-sea ecosystem off the west coast of Scotland has been studied for longer and in more detail than most. This study assimilates the significant published and unpublished information available on this ecosystem into an EwE model. The results suggest that there are sufficient data available to construct an ecosystem model, but the quality of the data varies and serious potential sources of error are present in biomass and discard estimates. The assumptions needed to produce a model are varied and must be considered when interpreting the outputs of the model. Ecosystem modelling provides a unique view of the deep-water ecosystem and facilitates hypothesis development concerning predator–prey and inter-fishery interactions. Sharks are used to illustrate the benefits of using an ecosystem model to describe changes in their biomass and their prey species. The results show that both fishing for sharks and fishing for their prey affect the biomass of sharks.



2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
MS Islam ◽  
M Rehnuma ◽  
SS Tithi ◽  
MH Kabir ◽  
L Sarkar

The study was conducted to know the status of water quality of the Ramna, Crescent and Hatirjheel lakes in the Dhaka city. Water samples were collected from three different points of each lake and analyzed for various physicochemical parameters including temperature, pH, EC, TDS, DO, BOD, hardness, alkalinity, acidity during the period from November 2013 to April 2014. The mean temperature 22.54, 24.59 and 24.24°C; EC 15400, 282.00 and 618.27 ?Scm-1; TDS 85.38, 155.60 and 339.90 ppm; pH 7.73, 7.85 and 7.67; DO 3.51, 3.92 and 3.65 ppm; BOD 0.93, 0.73 and 3.15 ppm; hardness 95.00, 108.56 and 105.11 ppm; alkalinity 48.9, 120.7 and 249.1 ppm, and acidity 2.18, 2.67 and 2.05 ppm were investigated from Ramna, Crescent and Hatirjheel lakes, respectively. Lower concentration of DO was observed in all three lakes that severely harmed the aquatic organisms and degrade their habitat. The comparative study demonstrated that the concentration of BOD, EC, TDS, alkalinity and acidity of Hatirjheel Lake was higher than Ramna and Crescent lakes which indicated pollution of the lake water. The rain and storm water runoff, lack of awareness of people were responsible for the pollution of Ramna, Crescent and Hatirjheel lakes water. Connection of the sewerage line with the rain water collection channels and mixing of solid waste with lake water are the main reasons for pollution of Hatirjheel lake. Poor water quality of these lakes affects the ecosystem and aesthetic beauty negatively. To maintain the sound environment and healthy ecosystem of the lakes and the surrounding areas need proper management and monitoring and implementation of existing laws and regulations. Moreover public awareness is necessary otherwise it is hardly possible to maintain sound water quality of these three lakes.J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 8(1): 1-5 2015





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