2.2 The music of our cities - our urban soundscape

The musical growth that was observed in our cities during the 1960s earned the term soundscape: defined by Raymund Murray Schafer as any sonic environment under study²², and now commonly considered as the acoustic equivalent of a landscape. It arose out of a concern for the acoustic quality of our urban environment due to increasing industrialisation and urbanisation: the clang of construction work and the rapid growth of motorisation were drowning out the natural soundscapes of plants and animals at an alarming rate.²³ This was accompanied by growing recognition of its negative impact on both our physical and psychological wellbeing: from stress, to hearing loss and sleep disturbances; leading to the identification of a new urban problem of noise pollution.²⁴ While many sought to solve this problem through the implementation of noise abatement initiatives, putting a limit on decibel levels did not resolve the core of the problem: the cause of the sounds themselves.