BBC Learnings · Section 20

Making cities feel quieter

Neil, I'm going to play you two sound recordings and I want you to tell me

Level: B1 · 107 sentences

Transcript

  1. Neil, I'm going to play you two sound recordings
  2. and I want you to tell me
  3. how you feel when you hear them.
  4. OK. First this.
  5. And now this.
  6. Oh well, that first clip made me feel really relaxed.
  7. But the second one, oh it's horrible!
  8. I felt quite stressed out actually.
  9. Oh no! Well, this little experiment shows
  10. how much we are affected by the noise around us.
  11. And that's a problem if you're one of the four
  12. billion people around the world who live in cities.
  13. Yes, whether it's the rattle of train tracks,
  14. honking car horns or the roar of airplanes overhead,
  15. modern cities are full of noise.
  16. And this can have serious effects.
  17. The World Health Organisation reports that by 2050,
  18. around 2.5 billion people will experience hearing loss
  19. and exposure to loud noise has been linked to stress and anxiety.
  20. In this episode, we'll be hearing about ways
  21. to make our cities quieter, more relaxing places
  22. using some useful new words and phrases.
  23. But now I have a question for you, Georgie.
  24. Sound is measured in units called decibels.
  25. But how many decibels would it be if I whispered?
  26. A whisper is speaking like this.
  27. Is it a 3 decibels, b 13 decibels
  28. or c 30 decibels? Oh, that's really hard.
  29. I'll go for b 13 decibels.
  30. Well, we'll find out the answer at the end of the programme.
  31. Let's start in one of the noisiest cities
  32. in the world, Mumbai in India,
  33. where daytime noise levels regularly hit 80 decibels,
  34. which is over 20 decibels higher than World Health Organisation recommendations.
  35. Listen to Mumbai native Chavi Sachdev
  36. share her experiences of living in this noisy city
  37. with BBC World Service programme People Fixing the World.
  38. I mean, India in general is just really loud.
  39. We are a loud people.
  40. We dress loud. We talk loud.
  41. We celebrate loud. We watch movies loud.
  42. When people ask me what I miss about living abroad,
  43. I tell them it's the quiet
  44. because after 12 years of living in the U.S.
  45. And Europe, When I got back,
  46. I realised I couldn't handle it anymore.
  47. I'd gotten used to lower levels of noise.
  48. Chavi says Indians talk loud, celebrate loud and dress loud.
  49. To dress loud means to wear clothes
  50. with bright colours and large, bold patterns.
  51. When Chavi returned to India after living overseas,
  52. she says she couldn't handle the noise.
  53. If you can't handle something, you find it difficult to deal
  54. or cope with. So what can be done
  55. to tackle noise in cities like Mumbai?
  56. One interesting approach involves using sound itself to make things feel quieter.
  57. Soundscaping is the idea of adding certain sounds to busy public spaces
  58. so that they sound and feel more relaxing.
  59. Sound artist Charles Montembeau lives near the Parc de Madelinot,
  60. a busy city park in Montreal, Canada.
  61. Charles was inspired to recreate the ocean sounds he heard on holiday
  62. in the Magdalen Islands in his city park back home.
  63. On BBC World Service programme People Fixing the World,
  64. he tells reporter Natasha Fernandes that these sounds
  65. included ocean waves and some unusual sounding sand.
  66. The sand and the Magdalen Island can sing.
  67. When you walk into the sounds firmly,
  68. the sand makes some squeaky sounds.
  69. So that's one sound that is kind of funny, kind of special.
  70. Inside this small park, surrounded by busy roads,
  71. Charles and his team set up an immersive sound installation
  72. in the form of speakers planted in flower beds.
  73. So the installation was really to make this park
  74. a little quieter by adding some quiet noises.
  75. It's counterintuitive, but you can make a park
  76. less noisy by adding some calmer sounds.
  77. The sand on the Magdalen Islands is squeaky.
  78. It makes a high-pitched sound called a squeak
  79. when stepped on. Charles played recordings of this sand,
  80. ocean waves and other relaxing sounds through speakers hidden in the park.
  81. He created an art installation, a work
  82. of art designed to give people an interactive experience.
  83. By adding more relaxing sounds, Charles'
  84. installation actually made the park feel quieter.
  85. It's an example of something that's counter-intuitive,
  86. meaning it happens differently from how you would expect.
  87. What a great idea!
  88. And similar soundscapes are now helping city dwellers
  89. relax in other cities too, including Tokyo and Barcelona.
  90. Now, Neil, you asked me a question
  91. about a very quiet sound a whisper.
  92. So, are you going to reveal the correct answer?
  93. I asked you how loud a whisper
  94. is. Yes, and I said 13 decibels.
  95. Well, 13 is an unlucky number and you are wrong.
  96. It was actually 30.
  97. OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned,
  98. starting with decibel, the unit for measuring sound.
  99. Someone who dresses loud likes to wear
  100. clothes with bright colours and bold designs.
  101. If you can't handle something, you find it difficult
  102. to deal with. An art installation is an artwork
  103. designed to create an interactive experience in a certain space.
  104. The adjective squeaky describes things which make
  105. a high-pitched sound, like a mouse. Squeak, squeak!
  106. And finally, if you call something counter-intuitive,
  107. you mean it happens differently from how you would expect.