Acoustic comfort evaluation in urban open public spaces

This paper presents the results of an intensive questionnaire survey and objective measurements on soundscape, aiming at the evaluation of acoustic comfort in urban open public spaces. From summer 2001 to spring 2002, 9200 interviews were made for four seasons in 14 urban open public spaces across Europe. The results suggest that the subjective evaluation of the sound level generally relates well with the mean L-eq, especially when the sound level is below a certain level, which is 73 dBA on the basis of this study. However. considerable differences have been found between the subjective evaluation of the sound level and the acoustic comfort evaluation: people tend to show more tolerance in terms of acoustic comfort evaluation. The background sound level has been found to be an important index in evaluating soundscape in urban open public spaces - a lower background level tends to make people feel quieter. Analyses of individual sound elements show that the acoustic comfort evaluation is greatly affected by the sound source type - introducing a pleasant sound can considerably improve the acoustic comfort, even when its sound level is rather high. No significant difference was found among different age groups in terms of subjective evaluation of a sound level. whereas in terms of acoustic comfort, there were significant differences. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.