Sensorial safety: control tools and perceived serenity

The theme of "safety" represents an increasingly important issue in urban environments. The most widely used solution to cope with this problem is the installation of surveillance tools. These measures neglect the problem of "perceived safety", an aspect that concerns an emotional dimension that is not related to raw security. The visual surveillance of the territory can’t grant this sense of serenity that should be rather generated by the construction of a perceptual balance between its elements - including its sounds. The paper intends to examine these issues, highlighting the urgency of promoting an active perception of the multisensorial signals coming from the human, natural and architectonic environment around us. The research aims to support the effectiveness of its conclusions through an experimental-empirical case study in the Ticino region, interested by a peculiar use of alarm sirens. Since ancient times, the sound of the siren has been an ambivalent reference for our culture: Ulysses and Plato describe on the one hand the siren as a symbol of danger, on the other of cosmic harmony. Even today, the sound of the new sirens is an ambiguous signal, able to generate contrasting sensations. An experiment conducted as part of the international research project “AmAs - Ambienti in Ascolto”, examined this signal, starting from the relationship it establishes with citizens’ emotions. Once a year, in fact, the Ticino region is affected by the so-called "sirens test", in which all the alarm sirens of the area are activated simultaneously to test their functioning. The result confirms the deep emotional connection of the inhabitants with this sound, and the peculiar ambivalence it generates. A clear sign that the feeling of security is not the result of a mechanical process, but the product of the deep relationship between places and citizens.