# Chatty Maps: Constructing sound maps of urban areas from social media data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07813 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.07813/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Learning Tri-modal Embeddings for Zero-Shot Soundscape Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10667/) (2023)
- [PSM: Learning Probabilistic Embeddings for Multi-scale Zero-Shot Soundscape Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07050/) (2024)
- [Audio-Based Pedestrian Detection in the Presence of Vehicular Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19295/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Urban sound has a huge influence over how we perceive places. Yet, city planning is concerned mainly with noise, simply because annoying sounds come to the attention of city officials in the form of complaints, while general urban sounds do not come to the attention as they cannot be easily captured at city scale. To capture both unpleasant and pleasant sounds, we applied a new methodology that relies on tagging information of geo-referenced pictures to the cities of London and Barcelona. To begin with, we compiled the first urban sound dictionary and compared it to the one produced by collating insights from the literature: ours was experimentally more valid (if correlated with official noise pollution levels) and offered a wider geographic coverage. From picture tags, we then studied the relationship between soundscapes and emotions. We learned that streets with music sounds were associated with strong emotions of joy or sadness, while those with human sounds were associated with joy or surprise. Finally, we studied the relationship between soundscapes and people's perceptions and, in so doing, we were able to map which areas are chaotic, monotonous, calm, and exciting.Those insights promise to inform the creation of restorative experiences in our increasingly urbanized world.