The Soundscape of the City

Abstract

This article analyzes the urban soundscape as a fundamental dimension for understanding the experience of the city and the construction of collective identities. Drawing on R. Murray Schafer’s concept of soundscape, it examines elements such as the general tonality of an environment, background and foreground sounds, and soundmarks that provide particular spaces with an acoustic identity. The author applies this approach to León, Guanajuato, describing the sounds found in avenues, neighborhoods, public squares, shopping centers, and peripheral areas in order to reveal the coexistence of different temporalities, social practices, and cultural influences. From a communicative and rhetorical perspective, the article proposes understanding each urban sound as a text and the acoustic landscape as a discourse open to interpretation. In this sense, the soundscape becomes a means of identifying ways of life, historical transformations, social differences, and expressions of urban identity, thereby offering an alternative way of understanding how a city represents and communicates itself through sound.