Speaker
Description
Despite advances in soundscape research, its application to urban planning and design practice remains limited. In many professional contexts, engagement with sound is still reduced to simplified metrics, if considered at all, leaving practitioners without the conceptual grounding or tools required to consider soundscapes. While raising sound-awareness remains an ongoing challenge, awareness alone is insufficient without accessible means to translate these concepts into practice. This is further constrained by the difficulty city makers face in imagining how soundscape tools might be used before they exist.To support this translation, we evaluated the interactive soundscape simulator City Ditty with 15 city makers from diverse professional backgrounds, including urban planners, architects, designers, and acousticians across public and private sectors. Participants used City Ditty’s immersive VR version (using head-mounted display) to engage in interactive soundwalks that introduced key soundscape concepts while allowing free manipulation of sound sources and contextual factors, such as time of day and weather, to explore the sonic implications of their actions. Participants then took part in semi-structured interviews examining how such tools might integrate into existing workflows, where they could provide the most value, and what barriers might hinder adoption.Results highlight both the potential and limitations of immersive, interactive tools in supporting sound-aware design practices. Participants identified opportunities for improved early-stage planning, training, workload support, and stakeholder engagement. Challenges were also observed across user, technological, and systemic contexts. Together, these findings contribute to ongoing efforts to translate soundscape approaches into adoptable, practice-oriented tools for city-making.