What is an Urban Quiet Park?
An urban quiet park can be defined as a natural region in or close to a city offering culturally relevant quiet experiences to city dwellers.
Ulf Bohman, an executive director at Quiet Parks International (QPI) explains an urban quiet park like this:
“In an Urban Quiet Park, the sounds of nature should dominate the soundscape. We can’t, in an urban setting, expect zero noise from the city entering the park. So we use the level 45 dBA [decibels] for maximum background noise.”
So, 45 dBA sounds more like a quiet conversation, similar to what we hear in a library. It is also considered near the lowest level of urban ambient sound. Last year, QPI had certified the Zabalo River in Ecuador as the first Wilderness Quiet Park.
About Yangmingshan National Park
One of the nine national parks in Taiwan, Yangmingshan National Park lies in between Taipei and New Taipei City. One of the prime features of the park is some 112 sq km of mountainous terrain, which makes it look otherworldly. There are also hot springs, forests, hiking trails, and subtropical climatic zones inside this national park, which is phenomenal.
Taiwan is one of the most densely populated destinations in the world, and is home to 22 million people. The Yangmingshan National Park, located just north of Taipei, features some rare aquatic plants, and also Formosan blue magpies that are endemic. The park is known for its preservation of quiet, and hence has got the title of the Urban Quiet Park.
QPI is planning 50 more certifications in coming 10 years which are potential quiet parks in Stockholm, New York City, Portland, London, and Oregon.
This is the new way of living that people must adhere to or else nature is already showing its distatourus colours in form of COVID-19 pandemic, cyclones, earthquakes and more. If humans do not pay heed to the nature’s call, things might not end well for us and the current situation is the prove of the fact.
