Speaker
Description
Introduction and research problem
Urban community spaces are shared by people whose daily rhythms, sensory capacities and expectations may differ considerably. Courtyards, neighbourhood parks, playgrounds, walking routes and community squares must accommodate rest, play, exercise, conversation, social gatherings and circulation, often within limited space. The sounds accompanying these activities can support belonging, restoration and social interaction, but they can also produce annoyance, avoidance and disagreement. Children’s play may communicate vitality to some residents and disturbance to others; community music may enable collective activity while limiting opportunities for rest; and quietness may be experienced as restorative, inactive or unsafe depending on the listener and context.
These differences create a form of everyday uncertainty for planning. The uncertainty does not arise only because acoustic conditions are difficult to predict or measure. It also arises because residents may disagree about what a shared place should sound like and because there is no neutral technical threshold capable of determining whose experience should take priority. As Christensen (1985) argues, planning under uncertainty concerns not only uncertainty about available means but also disagreement over desired ends. In community soundscape planning, the relevant ends may include quietness, vitality, health, sociability, cultural expression and intergenerational coexistence, without an established hierarchy among them.
Environmental noise research has demonstrated that unwanted sound exposure can harm physical and psychological health (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2018). The soundscape approach, however, distinguishes the acoustic environment as a physical phenomenon from the environment as perceived and experienced by people in context (International Organization for Standardization, 2014). This distinction redirects attention from the volume of sound alone towards its source, meaning, appropriateness, temporal pattern and relationship to the listener’s activities and expectations. Soundscape research has consequently examined outcomes including affective appraisal, restoration, comfort, behaviour and well-being (Aletta et al., 2018; Kang, 2023; Ratcliffe, 2021).
A growing body of research also suggests that age matters. Studies have examined how soundscapes affect children’s social behaviour and restoration (Su et al., 2023), older adults’ restorative experiences (Long et al., 2023), and multisensory evaluations across different age groups (Ruotolo et al., 2024). Chinese community research has identified older adults and children as particularly frequent users of outdoor activity spaces (Zhu et al., 2021), while recent studies show that community sound environments can influence residents’ social interaction (Chen et al., 2024). Nevertheless, this scholarship appears fragmented across acoustics, environmental psychology, public health, architecture and urban planning. Age groups are frequently studied separately, and limited attention has been given to how their findings relate to one another or to the planning of spaces shared across generations.
This paper addresses that gap through a scoping review of international and Chinese-language scholarship on age and intergenerational difference in community soundscape research. It presents a bounded evidence synthesis guided by the question: Whose sounds count in the research and planning of everyday community spaces?
The paper asks how age and intergenerational difference have been conceptualised in community soundscape research; which populations, settings, methods and outcomes have received the most attention; whether studies examine relationships or tensions between age groups rather than studying them separately; and how research findings have been translated into planning, design or management recommendations.
Conceptual framework
The review approaches the community soundscape as a socially negotiated environment rather than a technically neutral acoustic condition. Soundscape quality is shaped by an interaction among acoustic conditions, individual perception, activity, spatial context and sociocultural meaning. Consequently, a sound cannot be classified as universally positive or negative independently of the context in which it is produced and heard.
The paper uses “whose sounds count?” as an analytical question concerning both representation and knowledge production. “Whose” refers not only to the people producing sound, but also to those whose perceptions are recruited, measured or represented in research. “Count” has a corresponding double meaning: what can be quantitatively measured and what is recognised as legitimate evidence in planning.
The review examines four interrelated dimensions of uncertainty. Epistemic uncertainty concerns what is known about the relationships among sound, age, well-being and behaviour, as well as the limitations of the methods used to produce that knowledge. Experiential uncertainty arises from differences in perception across people, places, activities and times. Normative uncertainty concerns disagreement over what constitutes a desirable or appropriate community soundscape. Procedural uncertainty concerns whose experiences enter planning processes and how competing acoustic needs are negotiated.
These categories are not treated as predetermined findings. Instead, they provide an initial sensitising framework that can be revised through review. This allows the paper to connect soundscape evidence with wider planning questions about conflicting values, uneven recognition and collective decision-making.
Methods
The paper undertakes a scoping review because the relevant evidence is interdisciplinary, methodologically diverse and not necessarily suitable for statistical meta-analysis. The review follows the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews, PRISMA-ScR, to support a transparent process of identification, screening, selection and reporting (Tricco et al., 2018).
The search covers literature published from 2000 to September 2026, capturing the development of contemporary urban soundscape scholarship before and after the introduction of the ISO 12913 framework. English-language literature is identified through Scopus and Web of Science, while Chinese-language literature is searched through the China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Wanfang databases. Backward and forward citation searches supplement the database results.
Search terms combine concepts relating to soundscape or acoustic environment; age, generation, children, youth, adults or older people; and community, residential, neighbourhood or shared public space. Chinese search terms include combinations of “soundscape,” “acoustic environment,” “community,” “neighbourhood,” “residential area,” “children,” “youth,” “young people,” “older adults,” “age-related differences,” and “intergenerational.” Search strings are adapted to the structure and indexing conventions of each database rather than translated mechanically.
The review includes peer-reviewed empirical and conceptual studies addressing perceived soundscapes or acoustic environments in outdoor community spaces, residential environments, neighbourhood public spaces and comparable shared urban settings. Laboratory or virtual-reality studies are included only where their simulated environments and research questions relate directly to community or public-space experience. Studies concerned exclusively with clinical hearing assessment, occupational noise, indoor building acoustics or transportation-noise exposure without a perceptual or community-space dimension are excluded.
Following duplicate removal, titles and abstracts are screened against the eligibility criteria. Potentially relevant publications undergo full-text review. The selection process and reasons for full-text exclusion are documented in a PRISMA flow diagram.
A structured evidence-charting form records publication year, geographic location, disciplinary field, spatial setting, community type, participant age groups, definition of age categories, sample characteristics, research methods, acoustic and perceptual indicators, health or behavioural outcomes, treatment of social interaction or conflict, participatory components, and stated planning or design implications. The review also records whether participants are treated as users, research subjects, stakeholders or contributors to decisions.
Analysis proceeds in two stages. Descriptive mapping identifies geographical, disciplinary and methodological patterns in the evidence base. A qualitative thematic synthesis then examines how age difference is interpreted, whether relationships between generations are explicitly addressed, how acoustic benefits and burdens are framed, and what forms of knowledge are privileged in planning recommendations.
The research pays particular attention to studies conducted in China and other Asian contexts. These are not treated simply as regional applications of concepts generated elsewhere. The review examines culturally situated descriptors and practices, including the positive social connotations that liveliness may carry, alongside sound-related tensions surrounding children’s play, community dancing, commercial activity, mobility and everyday domestic routines.
Expected results
The review is expected to produce the first consolidated account of how intergenerational difference is represented in community soundscape research. Preliminary engagement with the literature suggests several propositions that the systematic search will test.
First, the evidence may be organised more often around separate age categories than around intergenerational relationships. Children and older adults frequently appear as distinct or “vulnerable” populations, while working-age adults may be treated as an unmarked norm. Such separation can reveal age-specific needs but offers limited insight into what happens when groups with different expectations occupy the same acoustic environment.
Second, the literature may concentrate on individual perception, annoyance and restoration more strongly than on collective use, negotiation and conflict. Studies have provided increasingly sophisticated accounts of how people evaluate acoustic environments, yet fewer appear to investigate how one person’s valued activity becomes another person’s unwanted sound or how such differences are addressed institutionally.
Third, research may privilege parks and restorative natural sounds while giving less attention to residential courtyards, community streets and other ordinary spaces where acoustic conditions are shaped by overlapping routines. Existing findings on birdsong, water and restorative soundscapes are important, but community planning cannot be reduced to adding preferred natural sounds. It must also address human sounds that carry social and cultural value.
Fourth, planning recommendations may more often concern physical interventions or noise mitigation than participatory procedures for negotiating competing needs. The review will examine whether affected groups are involved in defining soundscape quality or primarily consulted as sources of perceptual data after the relevant categories have already been established.
The paper’s primary output is an evidence map showing which generations, places, methods and outcomes have been studied and where significant gaps remain. Its conceptual output is a planning framework distinguishing epistemic, experiential, normative and procedural acoustic uncertainty. This framework identifies the questions that planners should ask before translating soundscape evidence into intervention: what is known, whose experience is represented, what values are in tension, and who participates in determining the response.
Discussion and conclusion
The paper argues that intergenerational soundscape planning cannot be based solely on identifying universally preferred sounds or reducing measured exposure. Community soundscapes are produced collectively, but the benefits and burdens associated with them are not necessarily experienced equally. Decisions about appropriate sound therefore involve questions of evidence, recognition and participation.
A scoping review is particularly valuable. If age groups have predominantly been studied in isolation, further fieldwork should examine relationships among them. If acoustic experience has been separated from spatial practices, soundwalks and perceptual surveys should be connected with behavioural and spatial observation. If residents have primarily served as data providers, later co-design methods should give them a role in interpreting findings and developing responses.
By bringing fragmented evidence into dialogue, the paper reframes everyday acoustic uncertainty as more than a deficit of technical knowledge. It is also a condition of plural urban life in which people experience, value and use shared environments differently. Asking “whose sounds count?” does not imply that one generation’s needs should automatically prevail. It creates a basis for examining how planning can recognise difference without prematurely converting some groups’ presence into noise.
References
Aletta, F., Oberman, T., & Kang, J. (2018). Associations between positive health-related effects and soundscapes perceptual constructs: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(11), 2392. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15112392
Chen, X., Kang, J., & Wang, M. (2024). The impact of the community’s sound environment on social interactions among residents. Building and Environment, 266, 112094. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2024.112094
Christensen, K. S. (1985). Coping with uncertainty in planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 51(1), 63–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944368508976801
International Organization for Standardization. (2014). ISO 12913-1:2014 acoustics—Soundscape—Part 1: Definition and conceptual framework. https://www.iso.org/standard/52161.html
Kang, J. (2023). Soundscape in city and built environment: Current developments and design potentials. City and Built Environment, 1(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44213-022-00005-6
Long, X., Che Din, N., Lei, Y., & Mahyuddin, N. (2023). The restorative effects of outdoor soundscapes in nursing homes for elderly individuals. Building and Environment, 242, 110520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2023.110520
Ratcliffe, E. (2021). Sound and soundscape in restorative natural environments: A narrative literature review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 570563. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.570563
Ruotolo, F., Rapuano, M., Masullo, M., Maffei, L., Ruggiero, G., & Iachini, T. (2024). Well-being and multisensory urban parks at different ages: The role of interoception and audiovisual perception. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 93, 102219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102219
Su, H., Ma, H., & Wang, C. (2023). Effects of soundscape on Chinese children’s social interaction measured by self-reported behavioral expectations. Applied Acoustics, 207, 109350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2023.109350
Tricco, A. C., Lillie, E., Zarin, W., O’Brien, K. K., Colquhoun, H., Levac, D., Moher, D., Peters, M. D. J., Horsley, T., Weeks, L., Hempel, S., Akl, E. A., Chang, C., McGowan, J., Stewart, L., Hartling, L., Aldcroft, A., Wilson, M. G., Garritty, C., … Straus, S. E. (2018). PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and explanation. Annals of Internal Medicine, 169(7), 467–473. https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-0850
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. (2018). Environmental noise guidelines for the European Region. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789289053563
Zhu, P., Liu, X., Lu, X., Guo, F., Tao, W., & Han, X. (2021). Soundscape evaluation comparison of outdoor activity space between gated and open communities. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 707477. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.707477