Sound provides an often-ignored element of our conceptualisation of the urban fabric. The power of music, sound and noise to denote place and demarcate space is used here to develop the idea of a sonic ecology. The paper attempts to map the relative order of this unseen city and to theorise its spatial and temporal patterning. The sonic ecology, a relatively persistent and chronologically ordered quality to sound in urban space, is used as a means of examining the distribution of sound and to weigh the broader social impact of these qualities. The ambient soundscape of the street is made up of a shifting aural terrain, a resonant metropolitan fabric, which may exclude or subtly guide us in our experience of the city, thus highlighting an invisible yet highly affecting and socially relevant area of urban enquiry.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Human geography
Research Field:	Urban geography
Objective Division:	Indigenous
Objective Group:	Pacific Peoples community services
Objective Field:	Pacific Peoples community services not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Atkinson, R (Associate Professor Rowland Atkinson)
ID Code:	45859
Year Published:	2007
Web of Science® Times Cited:	90
Deposited By:	Sociology and Social Work
Deposited On:	2007-08-01
Last Modified:	2012-09-24
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