Introducing our new series: City sound guides

It’s long been a conviction of ours at Cities and Memory that sound is hugely neglected in the field of tourism, and that trips to amazing places shouldn’t just be about sightseeing, but also about “sound-hearing”.

Yet when you search for “things to do in XXX” or “top attractions in XXX”, while you will of course be inundated with beautiful things to see, you will rarely encounter any must-hear sounds.

Sounds can define a city just as much as its sights, and as soundscapes are changing faster than ever due to factors like urbanisation, rapid changes in technology and increased homogenisation of cities, a city’s sounds can be at risk if we don’t take a moment to really listen to them and appreciate them.

With that in mind, we’re launching a series of “city sound guides”, to tell you all about the must-hear sounds that define various cities around the world.

As with so many of our sound projects, we’ll begin in the spiritual home of Cities and Memory, from which we (indirectly) take our name – read our sound guide to Venice, Italy.

If you’d like to suggest a city or submit a sound guide of your own from where you are, please just drop us a line.

You can either submit an entire guide as a guest post, or submit the sounds we’ll need to write one.