LAUSR

Environmental sounds are a key component of the human experience of a place as they carry meanings and contextual information, together with providing situational awareness. They have the potential to either support or disrupt specific activities as well as to trigger, to inhibit, or simply to change human behaviors in context. The experience of acoustic environments can result in either positive or negative perceptual outcomes, which are in turn related to well-being and Quality of Life. In spite of its relevance to the holistic experience of a place, the auditory domain is often not given enough prominence in environmental psychology studies. Environmental sounds are typically considered in their negative perspective of “noise” and treated as a by-product of society. However, the research (and practice) focus is gradually shifting toward using environmental sounds as mediators to promote and enrich communities’ everyday life. Designers explore how natural sounds can be mixed into urban life. While there is a lot of research happening in this area, the underlying mechanisms connecting environmental sounds, the physical and social context where they occur, and their perceptual effects on users, are still not fully understood (Axelsson et al., 2019). Furthermore, when exploring the aforementioned relationships, more challenges arise in terms of psychometrics and ecological validity of the methodologies involved. All such issues need to be addressed by researchers and practitioners of the built environment. For this reason, a broad spectrum of submissions was invited for this Research Topic. Article types ranged from conceptual analyses, to reviews and research papers. The studies presented here dealt with the characterization and perception of single environmental sounds or complex acoustic environments, as well as their management and design implications for the urban realm. The focus could either be on theoretical aspects (e.g., relationships between sounds and psychological and physiological aspects) or methodological aspects (e.g., protocols and procedures to gather objective and subjective data).