Acoustic Environment and Urban Sustainable Development in the City of Cáceres

The city of Caceres has a proportion of green area per capita higher than the recommended by the World Health Organization. In addition, this city has quiet areas with an important aesthetic value, as is the case of the Old Town. Urban green spaces mainly provide environmental benefits to the residents. The Old Town, besides its environmental value, has currently a clear economic importance. For this reason, in order to develop these areas in next years, projects which involve increasing the extension of some of these green spaces - Parque del Principe - and the connection of these areas with the Old Town through green ways - Paseo de Canovas - have been approved. In this study the features of these areas were evaluated through the perception of passers-by. The results show how the acoustic environment is an important factor to be considered in the perception of these urban environments. Noise satisfaction had the highest significant correlation with respect to the overall satisfaction despite obtaining a lower satisfaction than the other features. Also, the low sound levels mostly coming from road traffic had a significant correlation with respect to noise satisfaction. Therefore, if the environmental noise, specially noise coming from road traffic, is not taken into account in the development of these projects perhaps some of the sustainable development objectives would be negatively influenced.