Environmentally sustainable acoustics in urban residential areas.

The main aim of this thesis is to examine environmentally sustainable acoustics, considering mainly urban residential areas. The study has systematically examined the three essential aspects of environmentally sustainable acoustics, namely, people, buildings and resources. The investigations are focused on three aspects: (l) the effects of urban acoustics on people: a systematic field survey on people's perceptions which considered people's living experiences, sound preferences and social factors; (2) a series of buildings' life cycle assessments which examined the environmental impact from cradle to grave of the building's lifespan and tried to further comprehend acoustic sustainability of residential buildings; (3) various possibilities concerning the use of wind turbines around and above the residential buildings in an attempt to discover how to regenerate renewable wind energy and to avoid serious noise effects. The study has then been expanded from the three aspects, by revealing potential to achieving environmentally sustainable acoustics. Overall, it has been proved that environmentally sustainable acoustics is an essential part of the environmentally sustainability development. The thesis makes a positive contribution to urban residential areas through the illustration of a sustainable acoustics approach to environmentally sustainable development, and demonstrates how these factors should be associated with each other. Acoustics and sustainability is a rather new field this study only reveals some key issues. More systematic and in-depth study in other aspects is still needed