White/acoustic infrastructure: a crucial tool for the transition to an environmentally sustainable future in urban areas: The case of Paris La Defense, a modern district in dissonance

Sara El Samman

The national lockdown due to COVID-19 abruptly cut down on human activity in cities, and enabled urban dwellers to notice nature’s comeback through birdsong: It has shown that today’s urban environment is in acoustic imbalance. My research aims to provide an overview on how soundscapes fit into the landscape design process, and to explore the notion of white/sonic infrastructure in order to give a tangible tool for landscape architects to read landscapes with their ears and design acoustically sensible places for all living beings. Sound informs the design process not simply by reducing unwanted noise but by encouraging a sound-considered city design approach. This adopted strategy would entail the extraction and reinterpretation of sonic cues as blueprints for the reshaping of the space and the transformation of the soundscape experience for users and nature alike. The paper applies all of its findings on Paris La Defense, the biggest business district in Europe, who’s current morphology, within the ring of noise that is the “Boulevard circulaire”, dissociates it from its territory creating acoustic and physical discontinuities. A study of the flows that animate the site along with its morphology helped me extract the multiple sonotopes (sonic biotopes) that shape the acoustic space of the district. Sound maps were created and a white infrastructure strategy was furthermore developed. The article develops an elaborate method that could help translate a soundscape vision into concrete landscape design actions and proposes an approach to sonic continuities on large and local scales. White infrastructure affords the additional dimension necessary to conceive the landscape and to create space for the non-human, for the human, and for the dialogue between them. The notion of eco-acoustic design contributes to shaping a non-anthropocentric city that is considerate of all living things and therefore is crucial to designing ecological urban ecosystems.

As we have seen throughout this research, white infrastructure is an inexorable part of the landscape. It is an incredibly powerful and sensitive tool that allows landscape architects to listen, observe and contribute to the composing of the soundscape. It unravels a deeper and more sensitive understanding of the environment. Sound as part of the ecosystem is therefore crucial to the development of today's urban ecosystems, which are faced with many nuisances. It is a tool that can create healthy ecosystems if it is taken into account in the processes of urban planning in a framework of ecological transition.

Acoustic ecology relates the sound dimension with the physical space and all living things. A study on the sound balance, mechanical, human and natural sounds, informs on the animation of the physical space and on the quality of the sound environment that encompasses it. By reading landscapes with the ears-or rather listening to it, the landscape designer will be able to reshape the acoustic landscape by shaping the physical space and defining sound sources.

Although urban sound is generally perceived as unwanted noise and is characterized in negative terms, acoustic urbanism is not simply a matter of treating noise pollution, but also of creating urban ambiances on a human scale. The notion of a white infrastructure thus adds another sensory dimension to the tangible world of the green and blue infrastructures and proves to be an ecological infrastructure functioning as a link between all other frameworks.

In conclusion, it is not by simply adding “natural areas” that we make space for biodiversity to live in an urban environment. The greening of cities should go hand in hand with the balancing of soundscapes.

Composing an eco-acoustic city is therefore a work of balance and equilibrium, where the notion of ecotones is questioned in its multi-dimensionality. White infrastructure allows an additional framework necessary to conceive the landscape and makes way for the creation of space for the non-human, for the human, but also for the dialogue between all.

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