International Journal of

Sound as a non-visual component of landscape, has a significant impact on individuals perception of space. Because unlike the landscape that seeing and looking is totally an optional action, soundscape regardless of people comes to be heard and understood. Lack of attention to quality of emitted sounds in the environment may leads to problems such as noise pollution, lack of concentration, noise annoyance, disturbance and lack of privacy in people conversation in the urban spaces. A qualitative- quantitative assessment of soundscape is essential. In this regard, Naghsh-e-Jahan square in Isfahan, Iran as an urban space needs to be studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physical indicators of soundscape in Naghsh-e-Jahan square and to discover people perception of sounds. For this, questionnaire (n=385) was used. Indicators of L_Aeq and L_denwere evaluated via St-8851 sound level meter. Field sound metering (429 points with 10 meters intervals near to the walls in depth of 2 and around the fountains and 20 meters intervals in the interior space) has done. In order to complete coverage of noise events and acoustic condition three temporal frameworks; day time (07-19), evening (19-22), night (22-07) were selected. All the field studies were in winter of 2016. Collected data entered into the GIS map and noise maps produced. Results of questionnaires showed that the most unpleasant sounds were motorcycle and cars and gharries and most pleasant sounds were water sound. Results showed that in some points such as around the central fountain, entrance of Qeysariyeh Bazar, loop between Sepah and Hafez St. and pass of carriages, and the mean overall L_den is higher than standard levels of noise in urban spaces 55 dB (A) and need to be controlled and reduces up to stand. 

Nowadays, “Smart City” is a very growing and promoting concept. Unlike other concepts related to cities, like digital or green city, it encompasses all technological, human and institutional factors. However, there are too many different viewpoints and definitions of this concept in the literature. The problem statement of this research is that despite the existence of many points of view and definitions for the “smart city” concept, the management part of a particular city needs to formulate a special definition of “smartness” based on the specific characteristics, goals, priorities, policies, and constraints of that city. This paper provides urban planners and managers with an approach that helps them to determine a set of validated, customized and prioritized characteristics for the target city. These characteristics can be used to formulate a desired definition for the city, as an input for strategic planning of a smart city, a guide for aligning the main goals of a city, and a criterion for prioritizing the urban projects for a particular city. Our proposed approach consists of two phases. The first phase is based on a thorough content analysis on the significant body of the literature in order to take a valid and acceptable range of different viewpoints and characteristics of the smart city notion. The second phase relies on the characteristics resulted in the first phase and involves a specific form of validation, customization and prioritization steps for a particular city so as to determine a set of unique characteristics based on the upstream documents and stakeholders’ opinions. In order to show the applicability of the proposed approach, we present the results of applying this approach for the city of Tehran, the capital of Iran.