The inner city of Rotterdam is very dense and contains all kinds of activities and people. It is an area every citizen uses and whereby different purposes and behaviors occur. This makes it an area full of life, but also a fragile place looking
at the future and its liveability. As a result, residents who live or work in this area spend a significant amount of time in this area and have a difficult time finding a place to retreat.
This touches on the problem of noise pollution. The growing noise pollution determines the daily life of the citizens. And with it, psychological well-being is under pressure. According to Schafer (1993), there are only two ways to solve this problem: 1. a global energy crisis, which would eliminate the greatest sources of noise pollution; or 2. research into soundscape atmospheres and a focus on an auditory landscape (Schafer, R., 1993, p.181). The second choice seems to be a more optimistic one.
In this handbook, I will look at the role of noise pollution in the everyday lives of urban dwellers. The main focus here is the urban landscape, psychological well-being, and the relationship to sound perception. Urban planners place too much emphasis on vision, with the other senses playing a limited or non-existent role. As a result, the city’s image is incomplete (Castro, R., & Carvalhais, M., 2014, p.61).
This study aims to decrease the gap between psychology and urban planning but also to show a different ‘image’ of the world around us. And let’s hope that the composition of the sounds of the city will sound like your favorite song.

The province of South Holland has many important stakeholders and drivers that impact the economy of the whole of The Netherlands. This, together with the increasing global need for circularity, is why the province has an important task in the near future to take steps towards a circular economy. To address this task, this report has chosen to look into the agri-food sector, because of their high economical significance in South Holland, and the construction sector, because of the current and future high demand for housing. Both sectors also create large residual material flows. Minimizing the high amount of waste from both sectors is essential in order to reach a circular region. The existing approach in creating a circular economy is to often look at individual sectors and their material flows. This is logical, but adverse with the idea of circularity, where all chains are closed. We believe, however, that these problems don’t have to be solved within ‘their’ sector. Our vision to solve this problem is as follows: “In 2050, the material flow of the agri-food sector will be closed. All before-known waste is now used as a resource for the construction sector. Because of this, the waste of the construction sector is reduced. Because of the collaborative sector chains, they could now be seen as one interlinked sector. The South Holland agriculture sector is now a leading example for a symbiotic and self sufficient interlinked chain.” Our ambition is to create a new movement within the circular economy. Bottom-up initiatives show that it is possible to create interlinked sectors. This project will be a pilot in upscaling this idea, and proving this is possible and has greatly beneficial outcomes. The pilot focuses on using agri-food residual flows as a resource for the construction industry of South Holland, but can be an inspiration to interlinking other sectors. To approach the interlinking of sectors, we envision a few strategies. We will be bringing the pieces of different policies together, use education and knowledge as glue between the sectors, and use transport and infrastructure to support the connection. Spatially, this results in four types of transition areas, a new living environment where the two sectors come together, also impacting the surrounding areas. This also impacts citizens from a socio-economic perspective, because more cross-sector jobs will be created and competition between businesses will be stimulated, which drives them to become more circular.