Soundscapes across Cityscapes (CitySoundScapes): Relationships between biodiversity, sound and human health in urban green infrastructure

Description

Urban green spaces are an important habitat for biodiversity and can contribute to human well-being. The CitySoundscape project emphasises the importance of implementing biodiversity-based health interventions as a measure to improve the overall health and well-being of citizens in urban areas. The project takes an interdisciplinary approach and integrates findings from forestry, landscape ecology, urban planning, environmental psychology and public health. The main focus of the project is the study of soundscapes in urban environments - the auditory landscape that significantly influences human experience.

The project examines how urban green spaces need to be structured, equipped and distributed in urban spaces in order to be effective as habitats for biodiversity and as health resources for their citizens of any age. The experience and perception of the environment is a multisensory process: sensory impressions interact, evoke emotional reactions and are therefore of great importance for well-being in urban space.

Sound walks are used to investigate possible links between biodiversity and effects on health (well-being). The project involves citizens, civil society organisations and decision-makers from the fields of environmental and nature conservation, urban planning and health in order to develop a method for recording and characterising biodiversity (structural plant diversity, bird diversity) and its effect on human well-being (acoustic comfort, relaxation).

In particular, the team at the Chair of Public Health and Health Services Research is investigating: (1) What are the relationships between the structural complexity of green spaces, their soundscapes and their biodiversity? (2) What are the relationships between auditory walks, acoustic comfort and recreation and how are these effects influenced by social factors? (3) Where are places in the city with high biodiversity, high acoustic comfort and high recreational effects with a (positive) effect on well-being? (4) How can such spaces be comprehensively promoted in urban planning?

Consortium partners

• Chair of Urban Productive Ecosystems, TU Munich (lead partner),
• Chair of Strategy and Management of Landscape Development, TU Munich
• Chair of Terrestrial Ecology, TU Munich
• Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Technical Acoustics, TU Berlin
• Centre for Life Sciences and Society, LMU Munich
• Department for Climate and Environmental Protection, City of Munich
• BUND Naturschutz

Project duration

01.06.2023 - 31.05.2024: 1st funding phase
01.10.2024 - 31.09.2027: 2nd funding phase

Funding

BMBF Research Initiative for the Conservation of Biodiversity (FEdA), 'BiodivGesundheit'.

Contact persons

Dr. Michaela Coenen (MPH postgrad.)
coenen@ibe.med.uni-muenchen.de

Sophia Baierl, MSc
sophia.baierl@ibe.med.uni-muenchen.de