Holistic City Design
Photo by Christine Kerrigan
What could our cities look and feel like if we kept the sensory experience and local ecology in mind when we design and manage urban environments? I have the sneaking suspicion that they would be happier and healthier places to live.
Environmental noise can be considered as a challenge, which relates to public health, quality of life for citizens and environmental pollution. Whatever the case, sound plays a crucial role in the daily experience of citizens and the planning of our urban environments and cities.
Designing in a more holistic way is well within our reach and it just requires us to collaborate more across sectors and disciplines. It’s in this vein that our McGill Sounds in the City team, in collaboration with the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Laval University and the Direction de la Santé Publique de Montréal, brought together professionals (urban planners, sound professionals, health professionals, engineers, designers, elected officials, researchers, etc.) from the public, private, academic and non-profit sectors for an afternoon participatory workshop to collaborate on ways to help our cities sound better.
Multidisciplinary teams shared their expertise and experiences with one another as they worked to improve the sound environments on three different case studies: 1.) a quiet zone park area being disrupted by construction; 2.) a high rise building being constructed adjacent to an artery; and 3.) a residential area undergoing significant commercial development. The purpose of the participatory sessions was to exchange ideas in small groups and discuss possible improvements to systems and processes. New connections were also formed amongst the participants, which we hope will seed interesting future collaborations.
Our urban populations will continue to increase and we can no longer afford to work in isolation if we want to tackle system challenges our cities face now and in the future. As Buckminster Fuller put it, “We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”
You can visit the Project section of this site to view photos from the event.
Our July 9th McGill participatory workshop was hosted by ÉTS and also created in partnership with the Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux (MSSS) and the Ministère de l’Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques (MELCC).