‘What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.’
Yi-Fu Tuan
‘When humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to it in some way (naming is one such way) it becomes a place.’
Tim Cresswell
One issue that has been appearing in a number of locations is an increase in the amount of noise.
Developers move in to an area and there are some changes which temporarily cause building noise, but also the removal of vegetation which can dampen the noise.
Recently on the local news magazine programmes there were several features on the loss of small music venues in cities.
Some cities are known for their street art. This can sometimes be based on local musical icons, including those who have passed away - acting as a memorial perhaps, or a reminder of their influence.
Image: Alan Parkinson - just off Brick Lane, shared on Flickr under CC license
There are several sites which post these, including on Instagram.
Birmingham has its fair share of murals linked with Black Sabbath.
Sheffield has Jarvis Cocker.
Please share any musical murals from your own home area.
The latest in a series of guest blog posts from Carl Lee.
What is the sound of the city?
Can cities ever have a sound?
Something so distinct and culturally resonating that from the first half a dozen bars, a place, an identity, a city sweeps into your mind?
Does the Mersey really have a beat?
Can you trip hop to Bristol, or wallow in grunge on the streets of Seattle?
Clearly songs can evoke places and times.
The Clash made sure you knew that London was calling in the early 1980s, and every Christmas since 1987 we have enjoyed/endured a Fairytale from New York. Maybe you can take a different stance and completely diss a city in song as Randy Newman does with finality about Baltimore:
“Never gonna come back here 'til the day I die.”
This is probably an outlier as most songs about cities or a sound associated with a city are seen as positive affirmations of the local culture and place.
Some go further, with Jarvis Cocker’s X-rated homage to his home city Sheffield, ‘Sheffield Sex City’ of which, it might be observed, is more concerned with his idling smutty thoughts whilst in the housing benefit queue than the existential qualities of the city of Sheffield.
Jarvis’s mate, and occasional musical collaborator, Richard Hawley has probably got a better stake in being considered, if not the sound of Sheffield, at least its preeminent musical chronicler in the 21st century.
As Hawley himself has said of whether Sheffield has ‘a sound’, “it doesn’t really matter what type of music people make, what matters is that people are eager to play, to make music.”
For Hawley music is a craft, something that needs to be honed and practiced. And some places, and times, are better at providing the opportunities to craft away, whatever the genre of music.
In the late 1970s and 1980s a generation of musicians honed their craft whilst living on welfare benefits, Jarvis and Hawley amongst them. Local pubs provided them venues, an eco-system of support was developed, a market forged and sometimes fame found.
In 1986, Sheffield Council opened the first municipal recording studios, Red Tape Studios, to support musical aspirations in a building that also housed recording studios owned by members of local bands the Human League and Comsat Angels. They were trying to create a burgeoning local music scene. In the next street was The Leadmill, Sheffield’s most famous music venue that at that time was a Sheffield Council supported charity.
Image: Picture Sheffield.
Ownership of those private studios and the Leadmill has changed over time but Red Tape Studios remains as a local resource for aspiring musicians in Sheffield.
As Fender proclaimed on stage in his home city "this region is the best region in the whole damn country".
Developing music craft is not the same as creating a distinctive musical sound that has a clear, unambiguous association to a particular place, even when lyrical references of a place and its culture litter the songs of artists singing about their experience in their home towns, cities and regions.
Take away Sam Fender’s distinctive Geordie voice and the sound could also be the sound of Springsteen’s New Jersey, a continent away.
The Arctic Monkeys are another case in point. In their early days they may have sung about the fact that “You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham” but today they are clearly more New York City than Rotherham, and their mantle of South Yorkshire’s working class troubadours has well and truly been usurped by The Reytons who actually are from Rotherham, and very proudly so.
When The Reytons played to 20,000 in Rotherham’s Clifton Park in July 2024 it was a gig they had organised themselves like virtually all of their career to date.
Putting out their own music, managing themselves, organising their own tours and not bowing down to a global recording company. They were the ‘Kids Off The Estate’, where ‘Clifton Park was like Disney Land”, coming home to prove a point that music, certainly their music, was a thing intrinsically rooted in their home even though their sound was not too dissimilar to that of many acts around, Sam Fender for example, who weren’t Rotherham estate kids.
So the sounds of the city are many and can also sound like the sounds of somewhere else.
But then there is New Orleans, and Nashville, and Havana, Cuba. All flies in my rhetorical anointment.
Maybe the notion that anywhere can have a distinctive beat, melody or tone is simply nuanced and complex, like the world of music itself.
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
Videos have been filmed from cars driving through cities around the world. You can listen to music on the local radio station or in the car, and also opt to hear the background sounds as well, which include the engine and street noise, sat-nav instructions etc.
This site has more cities and different versions of the city in some cases than an earlier version, with multiple videos of some. There are hundreds of cities available.
I put Reykjavik on the screen during an Open Day at my school and enjoyed watching a car following familiar roads from trips there.
There are some fascinating cities to drive through. Think about the impression that you get from the views of one vehicle. Which part of the city has been chosen to represent the city? Does the route go past the 'nicest' parts or the Central Business District? Has it been selected to avoid the busiest intersections where the car might end up standing still for some time in queues? Can you work out where in the city it is with the help of mapping or StreetView (if available).
Try Sana'a in Yemen for example for an interesting cityscape. Follow a battered Land Cruiser for a while.
Or Fukushima City with pristine streets, and the wide roads of Abu Dhabi.
There's a few other options such as Doncaster in the rain.
Some videos are higher quality than others. Some of them take place at night time. There is a variety of weather, including the icy streets of Anchorage, the beach side roads of Brazil and Costa Rica, and the distant hills that can be seen outside of some cities.
You can also opt to walk or cycle through the city and there are other options down the right hand side of the menu, which can be closed and the site put on full screen to avoid distractions.
The speed at which you travel can also be controlled....
There are some different ways this could be used with with groups, and I can imagine some sort of analysis or comparison of two cities in different parts of the world to compare the buildings, infrastructure, standard of driving etc. Also look out for signs of globalisation on billboards.
While the vehicle drives through the city, you can also tune in to a local radio station and hear what is playing in the car as it drives through the city.
Tariq Jazeel, who works in the Geography Department at UCL has also served on the Governing Body of the Geographical Association and the Council of the Royal Geographical Society.
Tariq Jazeel gave an excellent session at the 2020 GA eConference on this topic, and referred those watching to a Talvin Singh track called 'Butterfly'.
If you haven't heard the track it is here....
Also check out his article from 2005 in Area.
Jazeel, Tariq. “The World Is Sound? Geography, Musicology and British-Asian Soundscapes.” Area, vol. 37, no. 3, 2005, pp. 233–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20004456. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025.
