PROCEEDINGS of the 23rd International Congress on Acoustics 9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany Characteristics of urban soundscapes worthy of preservation Yihong JIA 1 Jian KANG 1, 2 Hui MA 1 1 School of Architecture, Tianjin University, China 2 UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett, University College London, UK Abstract Sound environment is an essential component of overall environment and reflects the characteristics of a city. Unfortunately, some precious soundscapes are gradually disappearing with the rapid development of cities. Therefore, preserving urban soundscapes is as important as noise control in order to create a good urban environment. In this study, a questionnaire survey was first carried out in Tianjin to investigate the urban soundscapes that should be preserved. Totally 2504 respondents, including residents and tourists participated in the survey, and 158 urban soundscapes were chosen by them as being worthy of preservation. Twelve of these soundscapes were selected as representatives for a group soundscape walk to explore the characteristics of soundscapes worthy of preservation. The result shows that relaxation, vibrancy, representativeness, strength, and richness were prominent characteristics of the soundscapes deemed worthy of preservation. Meanwhile, the preservation level were positively correlated with their relaxation and representativeness characteristics. Keywords: Soundscape; Soundscape preservation; Characteristics, City 1. INTRODUCTION Improving the sound environment is an essential way to improve overall urban environmental quality, and to reflect the characteristics of a city (1). However, with rapid urbanization, the urban sound environment is gradually degrading (2, 3). Most research and policies focus on noise propagation and reduction in urban areas, however, the measures do not necessarily lead to better acoustic comfort in urban areas (4, 5). Noise complaints in China accounted for almost 50% of the total number of environmental complaints in 2017, compared with 39.2% in 2013. Soundscapes, as positive environmental resources, have proved to be effective in enhancing the impression of a city(6). Therefore, besides noise control, preserving original, positive soundscapes should also be considered as a useful method of improving the sound environment in cities. To identify the soundscapes worthy of preservation, previous projects and investigations have been performed in various types of spaces, including national parks and other naturally protected areas (7-9), historical city centres (10, 11), and the whole country (12). Overall, previous soundscape preservation studies have provided a quite detailed summary of the soundscapes worthy of preservation either from the point of view of the entire country or in specific blocks in urban areas. It seems necessary that additional studies need to be conducted from the perspective of soundscape preservation at the city level to create more active and vigorous cities. Moreover, these previous researches involving soundscape preservation commonly focused on field investigations and measurements (10), and in order to understand the soundscapes worthy of preservation more deeply, the characteristics need to be analysed. There have been numerous studies investigating the characteristics of soundscapes in different urban areas (13-15). However, studies of the characteristics from the viewpoint of soundscapes worthy of preservation are still lacking. Additionally, these characteristics directly influence the preservation levels of the soundscapes worthy of preservation, however, how these characteristics affect the level of preservation still needs 1 jiayihong123@sina.com 2 jiankang@tju.edu.cn; j.kang@ucl.ac.uk 3 mahui@tju.edu.cn 2521