DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2025-5(2)-168-185
“Listening to the city”: The human being and the soundscape of urban space
Daria Tereshkina
Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Veliky Novgorod, Russia
ORCID: 0000-0002-2079-1116
ABSTRACT
Urban noise is a phenomenon of great significance for contemporary humans. For city dwellers, urban sounds – beyond their destructive impact on the psyche – often become a form of “white noise,” with-out which the urban resident can no longer imagine a comfortable sense of being in space; for rural inhabitants, by contrast, the sounds of the city serve as one of the factors through which an alien urban environment is apprehended and mastered. A city possessing its own “voice” (for example, ancient free Novgorod) has been described in classical literature, above all in nineteenth-century Russian poetry, and is also interpreted by the people who live within it, each of whom constructs personal “soundtracks” in urban space. Our study, whose principal method involved encouraging young residents of Veliky Novgorod to reflect in written form on their perceptions of the city’s noise and sounds, confirmed the scholarly hypothesis that the physical (acoustic) perception of noise and sound effects in various urban locations does not become a sonic image of the city without its textual representation both for oneself and for others. A survey, supplemented by participant observation and interviews with residents of Veliky Novgorod of different generations and occupations, revealed common tendencies in how individuals comprehend their urban surroundings: that which is not described is not perceived as significant. Traditions relating to urban noise are manifested in an awareness of human “acoustic ecology” in urban space and in systems regulating permissible noise levels. New trends include the widespread use of urban noise as an artistic medium in media, music, advertising, and so forth, as well as its use as a psychotherapeutic tool for creating a background of an “inhabited,” “human” space, akin to the maternal womb, where “white noise” generates a sense of protection. Finally, the very acoustic composition of urban noise is changing, reflecting transformations of urban space, as well as the appearance and functions of the contemporary city as a whole.
KEYWORDS: soundscape, urban text, acoustic ecology, Russian poetry, urban space, Novgorod text, sound studies.
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Information about the author
Daria B. Tereshkina
Dr. Sci. (Philology), Associate Professor,
Head of the Department of Bilingual Education
Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University
41, Bolshaya Sankt-Peterburgskaya St.,
Veliky Novgorod, 173003, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0002-2079-1116
e-mail: [email protected]
For citation:
Tereshkina, D. B. (2025). “Listening to the city”: The human being and the soundscape of urban space. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 5(2), 168–185. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2025-5(2)-168-185
