Using acoustic perception to water sounds in the planning of urban gardens

Abstract

Ecoacoustics explains how animal and human behavior are affected by environmental sounds. Many studies show the marked role that sound has on people’s psychological health. Our world is more and more scarce in natural sounds that produce our well-being. In this sense, we explore what acoustic parameters are related to human comfort in cities. For this purpose, 16 water sounds, with very different acoustic characteristics in the number of harmonics, fundamental frequencies, spectral information and fractal dimension (¼complexity), were sampled. Therefore, any previous psychological conditioning can be expected in the choice of these sounds, since they are all based on the same source. We evaluated responses of 135 students, teachers and administrative people of the University of Extremadura (UEx) in a comfort scale defined by five levels between −2 (very unpleasant) to +2 (very pleasant) being 0 indifferent. Relationships between sound parameters and comfort responses show that information related to harmonics is behind the preferences. We have defined some useful recommendations to use these results in the design of more comfortable and relaxing urban parks and gardens. In this sense, we demonstrated that fountains with large waterfalls or jets, produce a marked acoustic aversion to humans. It is to be expected that the same effect will happen with birds and other small vertebrates present in cities. Instead, we recommend in the design of urban parks and gardens, the adoption of artificial water channels with small jumps whose acoustic characteristics are ideal causing deep and sustained relaxation.