Analyzing the Soundscape of an Urban Park: A Case of Semmozhi Poonga

This paper investigates the soundscape of a designed urban park in Chennai. Acoustic measurements and subjective evaluations of the soundscape were conducted at various locations in the identified case. The park was divided into nine zones for conducting the primary survey, such as parking area, entrance court, tree court, children’s play, herbal garden, butterfly garden, open-air theatre, duck pond, and mound. Fourteen different sounds were mapped based on the pilot survey that affected the users. Totally thirty responses were collected from each zone. The observed sounds include traffic sound, honking of vehicles, screaming of people & children, chuckling of children, the chirping of birds, ringing of the mobile phone, crowd talking, rustling of leaves, wind sound, play equipment sound, splashing of water, flowing of water, and machine sound. From the subjective survey, it is found that the individual soundscape preference collected from each space have no correlation with the overall soundscape experience of the same space. Based on the measurement data, the individual and the overall experience on soundscape perception were examined.