Soundscapes Oltrarno and sonic niches: designing soundscapes in the historic city

In Florence, Oltrarno is a diverse neighborhood of social and economic activity including craft workshops, universities, restaurants, churches, and piazzas. These activities produce distinctive and fascinating sounds – a craftsperson soldering steel window grates, young people singing together at a bar, church bells ringing in the late afternoon. This sonic richness is obscured by noise pollution created by automobile traffic. In the future, the act of replacing noisy, gas-fueled vehicles with quiet city cars and scooters will allow Oltrarno to recapture its sound identity. The question is, what sounds will substitute for the motors and horns? Soundscapes Oltrarno aims to facilitate the creation of spaces through digital technologies that can mitigate or counteract the steady drone or deafening roar of automobile traffic. The audio-based intervention investigated in this study aims not only to address the traffic noise that obscures the sound identities of places in Oltrarno, but also looks to engage the burgeoning youth culture in the neighborhood. The immaterial yet highly creative nature of sound allows for self-expression while avoiding a physical imprint. Soundscapes Oltrarno also uses sound to activate, bring content, or call attention to the small spaces, or “nooks,” throughout the neighborhood that are often overlooked. Finally, by harnessing digital technologies such as audio spotlights, digital music players, mobile phones, and multi-track recording software – both in the city and on the Internet – Soundsapes Oltrarno establishes an ‘open source’ process by which neighborhood residents and visitors can create, capture, manipulate and expose sounds in the public spaces of the city.