Brighton and Hove City Council and the Noise Abatement Society commissioned a night-noise intervention soundscape project, working in collaboration with Dr. Harry Witchel, from Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The research goals were to test the feasibility of making a music-based intervention and to gather preliminary data on the pro-social, territory-controlling effects of music in the unusual space of the West Street pedestrian tunnel in Brighton. When open at night, this tunnel could have positive public safety effects by reducing night-time pedestrian traffic crossing the busy King’s Road above it. However, in the past this tunnel was associated with negative public safety effects due to drug users, sellers and gangs using it as a night-time territory.

A music reproduction system with water-resistant specifications was installed into the tunnel, as were three video surveillance cameras and a digital video recorder. The music interventions were played between the hours of 7 PM and 7 AM on Thursday nights, Friday nights, and Saturday nights; for the duration of the pilot study, the tunnel was left open all night on these nights. Playlists of traditional, archetypal representatives of classical, jazz, and contemporary dance music (and silence) were cycled repeatedly to tunnel users.

Over 15,000 filmed episodes were recorded, having one or more individuals moving in the tunnel. Analysis of the video data was a mixture of manual analysis and semi-automated video analysis based on computer-vision. Classical music was found to diminish the surrogate measures of loitering compared to silence or other music. Faster tempo music led to faster walking speeds compared to slower music. The presence of music resulted in slower walking compared to silence. Music led to an unexpected effect of dancing in the tunnel. In a daytime experiment, brief exposure to music led to an increase in charitable donations to collectors for the Martlets Hospice.

In view of the encouraging results these experiments have provided, Dr Francesco Aletta from the Acoustics Group of the School of Architecture joined this ongoing project to provide a more solid scientific background for the acoustic part of the study. Further acoustic analysis were performed in the tunnel to yield more robust and detailed conclusions about the beneficial effect that soundscape management can have on the variables we have examined. The main phases of the work included:

-acoustic characterisation of the current sonic field in the Tunnel;

-acoustic modelling of different scenarios;

-laboratory and on-site experiments to test the proposed solutions.

The project was funded within the Santander Universities Early Stage Researchers Mobility Scheme [Dr Francesco Aletta, March 2015]