Urban Regeneration Using the Sound: The Project Augmented Reality Soundscape (ARS)

The project “Augmented Reality Soundscape” (ARS) deals with the issue of urban regeneration and it represents a first application to test the use of augmented reality applied to the sounds. It is part of a larger research aimed at defining methods to promote Soft Urban Regeneration Actions. Authors intended the term soft to underline the possibility to intervene on urban assets using methods and procedures that are based on the involvement of locals act without contrasts. This process develops in three main phases: 1) the sustainability (economic, environmental and social) of the intervention; 2) participatory processes by involvement of locals; 3) evaluation of the effects of the intervention. The use of the soundscape in urban renewal is a still unexplored field of the urban research that can be indagated with the aim of defining shared occasion to transform and use urban public spaces giving them the possibility of acting as a magnet of care and attention for residents and tourists. The paper in the first part introduces to this idea of using also sounds to “augment” the perception of a physical space, in the second part it presents first findings of an application of the ARS in Cachan (France) carried out with the engagement of the students at University Paris-Saclay in Cachan.