A once rich urban natural soundscape has been thinned by development
Evidence
I was always fascinated with listening to my environment. From early childhood I have been a listener. I grew up in a time when there existed a very rich and dense soundscape3 of insects, birds and animals in Houston Texas in the 1930s. … Now in the 21st Century, that soundscape is considerably thinned out by asphalt, concrete pavements and building developments. Houston still has cicadas in stereophonic corridors as you walk or drive the streets but the frogs have mostly disappeared, leaving their sonic niches unfilled except for the sounds of combustion engines. — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 34
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: charting the sonic extinction of a city over ninety years — which animal voices vanished from Houston’s streets and what replaced them.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 34
- XREF: connects to: Inconspicuous everyday sounds vanish from the soundscape unnoticed by locals — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 804; Urbanization shortened the distance humans can hear and see — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 150; City dwellers become functionally deaf to a constant low background urban hum — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute…, 94 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Urbanization shortened the distance humans can hear and see
#corroborates(0.75) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 150 - Indoor concert music arose as the outdoor world grew too noisy
#expands(0.75) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 369 - Inconspicuous everyday sounds vanish from the soundscape unnoticed by locals
#expands(0.70) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 804 - Anti-noise strategies fail because they cannot restore listening connection to the land
#expands(0.70) — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 21 - City dwellers become functionally deaf to a constant low background urban hum
#expands(0.65) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 94