Contemporary urban life: Let cities speak

Noise is everywhere. We live with it, inside and outside our homes. It defines contemporary urban life, the world over. Its companion, silence, also holds its own: from the stretches of suburbia to the degraded spaces of nature, a seeming absence of life is apparent.

The first “Let Cities Speak” article finished by asking: how do communities discover sonic identities within these contemporary soundscapes? This article points to research projects that seek answers to this question.

I have argued elsewhere that sound installations can act to “rupture” noisy soundscapes, producing zones of experiential diversity. There are many