Acoustics in urban parks: Does the structure of narrow urban parks matter in designing a calmer urban landscape?
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Acoustics in urban parks: Does the structure of narrow urban parks matter in designing a calmer urban landscape? Shahla TASHAKKOR, Atefeh CHAMANI (✉), Mozhgan Ahmadi NADOUSHAN, Minoo MOSHTAGHIE Environmental Sciences Department, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan 81595-158, Iran
© Higher Education Press 2020
Abstract Urban parks can function as a proper sink of noise pollution. However, lack of universally-agreed upon methodologies and differing urban conditions have fueled controversy surrounding the effectuation of this urban park function around the world. Hence, to address this controversy in narrow urban parks (with a mean width of ~109 m) in Isfahan City, Central Iran, noise levels (Lq30) were measured along two longitudinal transects placed along the interior northern river-and adjacent to the southern edge of the parks bordered by a heavily-conjected road. We used statistical tests and models to determine the association of noise levels measured along the northern transect with the distance to, and the intensity of noise emitted from, the road, vegetation biomass, and vegetation height within two 50 and 100 m buffer rings drawn around northern sites and the richness of bird species. The average Lq30 values differed significantly between the southern (~73.21 dB) and northern (~66.43 dB) transects and correlated negatively with species richness (r(98) = – 0.324, p < 0.01). Three variables including mean NDVIwithin the 100 m buffer ring, distance from the road and mean Lq30 values of the nearest three southern sites were included to build the best predictive multiplelinear regression model through the step-wise procedure with r2 of 0.52. These findings suggest that further attempts aiming to alleviate the parks’ interior noise level should be attentive to distance to road, traffic at the nearest road part, and the interior vegetation characteristics. Keywords noise pollution, multiple-linear regression, NDVI, vegetation height, Isfahan
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Introduction
Preserving natural environments has long been recognized Received September 10, 2019; accepted February 14, 2020 E-mail: [email protected]
as indispensable and strategic for ensuring sustainable development (Larson et al., 2016). Natural environments upon which human life depends not only consist of biodiverse, vast, and relatively pristine ecosystems but also involve the type of nature near where humans live like urban green spaces, or more specifically, urban parks (Chiesura, 2004; Low et al., 2009). Urban parks are defined as green and wilderness spaces within the urban canopy which are mainly covered by vegetation (and water) and are reserved for public use and recreation (Konijnendijk et al., 2013). The idea of introducing urban parks and green spaces into urban areas, as defined above, dates back to the 19th century in the US and Europe (Loughran, 2018). At first, they were aimed at compensating for population crowding and nature loss, thereafter mediating social and cultural problems (Schuyler, 1986; Greenberg
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