My first contribution to the Hush City map!
I was in a local park recently and realized that it was an ideal candidate for “Hush City.”
Hush City is an app with a map. It’s part of a project headed by Dr. Antonella Radicchi, and it’s based in Berlin. Using Hush City, you can record a quiet space, take a photo of it, submit comments about your experience there, and add that information to a map.
The Hush City goal
Hush City’s goal: to identify and preserve quiet oases in urban zones and to share the locations with other people. Every city dweller needs respite from traffic, noise, and congestion. Thanks to Hush City, you can already find quiet spaces in cities like Berlin and other parts of Germany.
But the project isn’t limited to any one locale — it’s international. Everyone can use it, everywhere. And so I decided to start mapping the quiet public spaces in San Francisco. To begin, I chose a small neighborhood park in the Cole Valley neighborhood.
Describe your experience
The app prompts you to start a recording and save it. Then you get a survey where can add comments about your experience in the location — was it relaxing, energizing, stressful? Were the sounds natural? Does anything disturb your sense of quietness? What kinds of activities are going on in this space? And so on.
When you finish the survey, you can take a photo of the location and upload it with your comments and your audio recording and add it to the Hush City Map.
Get creative with the app
Of course, you can also record less-quiet locations. Or you can record the same quiet space at different times of the day to see if it changes during the evening versus daytime. You can get creative with mapping the soundscapes of your own city. The more information, the better!
I would love to map more quiet spaces in San Francisco. Would anyone like to join me?
Download the Hush City app for iOS from the App Store or for Android from Google Play.
