Abstract
The sound environment reflects regional history and culture and life of people. And for developing and maintaining the region, the sound environment is also unignorable because of its regional originality. We took a survey on the present situation and transition of the sound environment to 136 answerers living in 8 residential areas of the City of Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture. Main questions are “sound heard today, ” “sound used to be heard, ” and “sound representing Odawara.” Sound environment is increasingly unified because of the traffic noise caused by automobiles. Meanwhile, there are sounds indigenous to each residential area. Items chosen as “sound repre-senting Odawara” are “sound of festival, ” “sound of waves, ” and “sound of bells, ” and they are not necessarily such sound as is frequently heard in daily life, but inhabit-ants associate the sound with geographical and historic images of Odawara.
