Evaluation of acoustic comfort and improvement needs in green spaces in Valencia as a contribution to the Action Plan

The city of Valencia wants to incorporate in the city's next Noise Action Plan the positive perspective that considers the soundscape. As a first step, the degree of acoustic comfort of the urban spaces most used by the citizens was evaluated. The diagnosis was focused on the districts where population values the tranquillity of their neighbourhood with a lower score. The Results of the Barometer of public opinion were analysed, both to select the districts to analyse, and to know the use of the green spaces in each zone. The paper presents the results of the acoustic comfort assessment and the improvement needs of the selected spaces. The work focuses specifically on the acoustic variable but adds a holistic perspective of Urban Comfort in urban environment. TECNALIA combined in this work a methodology based on expert judgment or observation of subjective variables that characterize the environmental comfort (CUP-Lite), which includes the inquiry of the opinion of users on aspects that can be improved. In parallel, a collaborative evaluation process was opened with the ComfortUP! App, which is an application that allows users to collect their opinions on environmental comfort.