Listening to the Future: Using Participatory Sound Fiction to Engage Young People in Urban Design

In spatial planning of urban areas, there is a need for new methods for meaningful inclusion of less represented voices as those of young people. This study focuses on how participatory design, design fiction and sound design can be combined to engage youth in urban planning processes. This is investigated by developing and testing a method called participatory sound fiction. The method was tested with a group of young residents in a suburban area in Sweden. Sound fictions of the suburb in 2170 were created and discussed among the youth participants. The results show that through discussions and speculations about the future, important insights were revealed about the youths’ reality, which can be of value in spatial planning processes as well as in understandings of how the youth experiences their living area. Furthermore, the study found that sound can broaden youths’ perspective on their immediate environment, that participatory sound fiction has the potential to engage youths, and that youths prefer to discuss the present to feel that their voices are being heard.


INTRODUCTION
One of the basic principles of the United Nations Act on the Rights of the Child is that children have the right to form, express and have their own opinions in all matters concerning them, including participation in societal development.The Act has therefore contributed to the right of children and young people to participate in urban design and urban planning processes [12].This aligns with contemporary calls for more inclusive planning, taking in the needs, values and perspectives of those traditionally excluded.The inclusion of children and youth is seen to have potential and may contribute with new perspectives that broaden the view of the relationship between people and the environment in urban design [31].Children and young people's participation may challenge the prevailing power relations between children and adults and change practices in such a way that new routines are established that meet children's needs [31].Based on this there is a need for developing and testing methods that can include youth in a meaningful way in urban design processes [37].
Methods used in participatory spatial planning are most often aimed at well-educated adult audiences and tend to focus on rational argumentation about what is the preferred or best solution for a given neighbourhood given the financial resources available.Such approaches however leave out creative speculations of how neighbourhoods could be not only now, but in a more distant future.Second, relying on rational argumentation leaves out other ways of perceiving our living environments as through our senses, and the important role that sensory and embodied experiences of our surroundings have for our well-being.Here we see the benefits for spatial planning to integrate approaches where more space is given to sensory modalities such as urban soundscapes and noise levels in the planning processes.
As sound is a prevalent element in cities but has not been wellresearched when it comes to participatory approaches for urban design (with the exception from [1,18,26,34]), this study aims to contribute to that gap with the analysis of how sound can be used in urban design processes with a special interest in the inclusion of children and youth.This is investigated by developing and testing a method called participatory sound fiction, which is created as a combination of participatory design, design fiction and sound design.Participatory sound fiction is aimed to work as a tool for urban designers to engage youth in urban design and urban planning processes.The method was deployed and tested with a group of young residents in Vårby, a suburban area in Sweden, to answer the following questions: How may participatory sound fiction support and generate insights into young people's everyday lives?How can sound function as a tool to promote imagination about a future urban sound environment?And how can participatory sound fiction create value in urban design processes?

BACKGROUND
There is an ongoing trend in urban design to co-create the urban space together with stakeholders, including the local population [10,40], and not the least with children and youth [22,31].Here, various participatory approaches have been explored [16,18], also with a particular design focus, building on the well-established field of participatory design (PD) [8,35].As PD emphasises the importance of empowerment for individuals and groups [38], empowerment can in this context be achieved through a deliberating process involving mutual respect, critical reflection and consideration which aims to create a more even distribution of resources by giving marginalised people greater access to them [30,33].One way to achieve this is to let participants define their own problems and develop solutions, but it can also mean providing means to create an experience of power, control, self-confidence, or active commitment [28].

Design fiction as a participatory design approach
In this study, participatory design is approached through the means of design fiction, where the participants are invited to speculate about the future.Design fiction as described by Dunne and Raby [19] is when speculative, fictional, and imaginary design meet and are combined.Furthermore, it tends to be a mixture of design, scientific facts, and science fiction where speculative stories are created about possible futures that in turn may support reflection on what a desirable future can look like [5,23].Design fiction takes place when fiction and facts are linked and opens a playful space in between, as fiction and facts in practice always are intertwined to the extent that they are interdependent and inseparable.Consequently, it can also be described as designing objects or prototypes with stories, which act as props to promote imagination and speculation about possible worlds in the near future [5].The process of creating design fiction promotes a creative rather than critical way of working that allows the imagination to explore the unknown.Thus, the purpose is to provoke, innovate, ask questions, investigate, and explore ideas in order to create opportunities for reflection and discussion, that at its best open up for increased political engagement, change of social behaviours or possibilities to challenge the status quo [23].In this study, we use Lindley and Coulton's [27] characterisation of design fiction as (1) being something that creates a narrative world, (2) including something prototyped as a manifestation of that narrative world, and (3) to create a discursive space.
Bleecker [5] argues that science fiction defamiliarises the ordinary to create or predict alternative futures.In the context of design fiction, defamiliarisation serves the purpose of breaking away from the familiar to explore new possible forms and experiences.Defamiliarisation is explained as a technique that questions interpretations of everyday objects and aims to make the familiar strange and argues that defamiliarisation is necessary to open the design space for technologies in the home because the home is too familiar a place for people.Bell et al. [4] mean that everyone is an expert on their home and that it is thus loaded with personal, cultural, and political assumptions, which limits the design space.The perspective of defamiliarisation is applied here in the participating youth's hometown and surrounding area, using design fiction and sound design to defamiliarise the familiar local area to open up the design space and explore what the future in the suburban area inhabited by the young people could be like.
Ambiguity is one of the central aspects of design fiction [7], as ambiguity can be a resource for design.Although ambiguity can be frustrating, it can also be captivating, mysterious, and glorious.When people are forced to interpret situations by themselves, they are encouraged to think conceptually about design and its context, which establishes deeper and more personal relationships with design [21].According to Dunne and Raby [19] there is an advantage to engaging people through the skilful use of ambiguity because this surprises and creates a more subtle approach to the relationship between the real and the unreal.Gaver et al. [21] also mean that ambiguity can engage users in problems without the designer limiting their reactions, enabling users with different socio-cultural backgrounds to make their own interpretations.They also present a kind of ambiguity called ambiguity of relationship which drives the user to imagine how something could be used or affect their life.This speculation drives the user to make intellectual, aesthetic, emotional and moral judgments that can be used for self-reflection and to form a personal experience [21].In sum, one may argue that ambiguity allows designers to suggest problems or perspectives without describing solutions, making ambiguity a powerful design tool for asking questions without determining the answers in advance.
Previous studies combining PD and design fiction have for example focused on how participatory design fiction can make the voices of vulnerable users heard [32], explored future scenarios to strengthen local identity [3], or to support older people in participating in local decision-making [6].These studies show, among other things, that participatory design fiction gives a voice to vulnerable users who would not otherwise be involved in design processes [32] and that the method can contribute to empowerment by allowing groups to use their imagination to come up with alternative solutions on obscure problems [3].By including those who are most affected, the creation of preferred futures for the participants is also made possible, which can lead to empowerment for the participants' situation [32].Previous studies also show that non-experts' participation in design processes can be encouraged by focusing on imagination rather than a feasible and practical design [3] and that through the creation of unrealistic concepts, discussions that explore problem space can be promoted [6].The creation of narratives inspired by science fiction can here be seen as a resource that enables participants to view their familiar situation from a new unknown angle [32].

Soundscapes and sonic interaction
Most existing design fiction projects have a strong focus on text and visuals to envision future situations.This work instead relies on sounds and soundscapes and the insight that our sonic experience is an important and integral part of how we experience our surroundings.A soundscape can be described as the equivalent of sound to a landscape and is defined as "the acoustic environment of a place, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors" [11].The experience of a soundscape is so forth multidimensional [17] and people's perception of the soundscape in a specific place is largely influenced by the context between the human and the place [11,25].The perception is influenced by each person's own experiences and memories of the place, as well as the person's other demographic characteristics, lifestyle, and cultural affiliation [24].The acoustic environment in a place consists of the sounds from all sources that can be heard by someone in the place and the soundscape is shaped and influenced by all the sound sources on the site but also by the physical attributes of the site that the sound can bounce against or be absorbed by [11].Soundscapes according to Murray Schafer [29] consist of three categories of sounds: keynotes, signals, and sound marks.The basic tones in a soundscape function as background noise that often comes from nature as the sound of water, wind, and animals.Signalling sounds are explained as sounds in the foreground that catch the listener's attention, it can be warning sounds such as sirens, whistles, or bells.Sound marks are the sound version of landmarks, it is sounds that are unique or possess characteristics that make the sound pay special attention to the people on the site.Thus, sound marks are the sounds that are characteristic of a specific place [29].
In both planning and design of our urban environments decisions are made that have important effects on the soundscape and how we experience the surrounding sounds.However, the possibilities of considering sound issues in design projects have not fully recognised, which is problematic as sound influences health and well-being among people and is an important factor in environmental experience [13].Several researchers and designers have been working with sound in urban design, and foremost challenging the traditional criticisms of noise, and presenting alternatives to urban soundscape design approaches concerned with managing the negative health impacts of noise [13,24,25].Urban noise has in these approaches been considered as a creative material and cultural expression that can reshape the cities [25].
Sonic interaction design is explained as a field of research that explores how sound can be used to convey information, meaning, aesthetic and emotional properties in interactive contexts [39].Research within the field aims to identify new roles for sound in the interaction between users and artefacts, services, and environments.Franinović and Salter [20] describe sound as an inevitable expression of actions and that the interesting thing about sound is what, or who performs the interaction with it.In line with [39] that highlight that the properties of sound are affected by human actions and the attributes of physical objects as well as the surrounding environment.In addition, as more and more sounds today are being designed, designers of sound must consider the context in which the designed sound will be heard and consider both the direct users but also others who will inadvertently be affected by the sound.Undoubtedly, the soundscape is an important aspect to consider in understanding how the designed sound will be perceived by people [39].In line with this, Adhitya and Scott [1] mean that sonic interaction design has a lot to offer for urban planning due to the ability of sound to create a more immersive experience of urban environments.Sound has also been proven to have great potential to be used to allow participants to challenge and question everyday situations, identities, social codes, and urban experiences because sound can bring people together, which creates a feeling of intimacy, atmosphere, and a shared experience [20].Ballard's [2] influential science fiction fantasy book the Sound-Sweep also shows how imaginative engagement with sound in urban areas could be explored and touched upon by using sounds of the future.In addition, sound possesses an ability to evoke strong emotional reactions [39].
Although there are previous studies that have focused on design fiction with sound, these have mainly focused on auditory experiences and components, by for example, studying how auditory experiences can engage people by speculating about future scenarios and thereby help them create areas of use for future technologies [15], or how design fiction and sound can be combined through games where players can use sound fiction to build meaningful narratives together, as well as to investigate how the participants imagine different scenes using sounds instead of visual equivalents [14].The results from these studies show, among other things, that design fiction created using sound has the potential to arouse imagination and reflection, and that auditory experiences can enable illusions of movements through time and space that can contribute to notions of e.g., technology development [15], and that auditory components can stimulate improvisation and engagement [14].

PARTICIPATORY SOUND FICTION: CREATING SOUNDS, CREATING DISCUSSIONS
In this study, we propose and evaluate a new method called participatory sound fiction, based on the intersection of three theoretical starting points: participatory design, design fiction and sonic interaction/sound design.Drawing on PD and participatory approaches in sound design, the value of learning from the participants being experts in their own situation, and the opportunity to create empowerment for the participants is elaborated.Design fiction contributes with opportunities to create space for discussion about real problems, challenge current situations and look at everyday life from new perspectives.Sonic interaction and sound design bring to the fore the ability of sound to arouse imagination, emotions, and discussion.The proposed method could potentially be used in collaboration with any user group that is affected by the design, but in this study, the main focus lies on the involvement of youth in urban design processes.The participatory sound fiction method thus aims to be a collaboration between urban planners, designers, and youth, and consists of three main activities: 1) a PD workshop with participants, 2) the creation of sound fictions of the future, and finally, 3) a presentation of and discussion about the sound fictions with the participants (see Figure 1).The method is supposed to be adapted to the specific circumstances and properties of the project in which it is carried out.The method and the different activities were developed using an iterative design approach, where an initial design was created based on the outcomes of related literature discussed above.Each activity was then iterated based on smaller pilot tests, and internal critique sessions.During the process, the method was also presented and discussed with different stakeholders such as urban planners, youths, and staff at a youth centre.Finally, the method was tested in a larger study, where the method was carried out with young participants in a similar fashion to how it is intended to be used in the context of urban design, and where audio data was collected from interviews and collaborative sessions.The analysis of the empirical material was carried out using thematic analysis [9] on transcriptions of the collected data material.The main contribution of this paper primarily stems from the results and insights of this study.
The setting for this study has been limited to focusing on youth's experiences in the suburban area of Vårby in Huddinge municipality outside the region of Stockholm in Sweden.Vårby is described by the police authority as a vulnerable area, characterised by low socioeconomic status and where criminals have an impact on the local community, resulting in perceived insecurity and a reduced tendency to report crimes and participate in legal proceedings.It is important to note this as the youth participating in the study live in this area and are constantly reminded of this in their everyday life.This study has been developed in collaboration with the youth centre in the suburban area and the recruitment of participants was carried out in collaboration with the staff at the youth centre.The participants were volunteers and wanted to participate as they found it interesting with sound and music.The study includes eight youths aged 15-16 years old, participating in the two participatory workshops (with six participants in the first workshop and three in the second one, and with one participant taking part in both workshops).The following sections outline both the three different activities that constitute the participatory sound fiction method, as well as describe how each activity was tested with users.

Step 1: Participatory design workshop
In the first step, a participatory design workshop was performed together with a group of youths at the youth centre in Vårby.The workshop was about one hour and was documented by audio recording and note-taking.The purpose of the workshop was to generate ideas and fantasies that can form the basis for the creation of sound fiction.The workshop adopted a semi-structured format based on a conversation adapted to the project being implemented and the participants.The participants were treated as experts according to a PD approach aiming for the participants' voices to be heard, along the lines of [38].The first part of the PD workshop focused on today's sound landscape of the area.Before the workshop, a sound clip was recorded in a place that was familiar to the participants.This sound was played out for the participants and was used to support the discussion about the participants' thoughts and feelings about the place, encouraging the participants to reflect on sounds in their immediate area.
The second part of the workshop focused on the participants generating ideas.The starting point was the question "How could the future sound like?".Like previous studies, the goal was to let the participants speculate about possible futures based on fantasy and science fiction rather than realistic design proposals [3,6,32].Focusing on imagination rather than practically feasible design proposals encourages the non-experts to participate in the design processes [3].As science fiction is important in design fiction [5], we encouraged the participants to adopt a perspective inspired by a year in the future, 2170, and to use this as a starting point in the speculations.The year chosen was far enough to be able to promote a view of the future where everything is possible.
To adapt the content to the participants, places to speculate were drawn from relevant and recognisable places for the participants.The chosen places, the square, the city centre and the park, were places that potentially will undergo changes in the future.Before the selection, a field study was carried out to establish the appropriate places.The places were presented with the help of "what if" questions to promote imagination and focus design work [3].These questions encouraged the participants to think about what could happen, what could exist, and how it could sound on the site in the future.The participants then generated ideas about what could be there and how it could sound.Through these ideas, a story of the places was created by the youths.To further promote the participants' imagination and to make sound design more present in the process, inspiration is taken from a study by Cheng et al. [14], which used playing cards to represent sound as trigger material.Before the workshop, 23 numbered playing cards with associated sounds were designed.At any time during the workshop, it was possible for the participants to take a card and the corresponding sound was played (manually) on a loudspeaker.The participants were then asked to speculate about what the sound might be at the site in the future.The sounds were designed so that they could not be found in reality, we used digital synthesizers and digital sounds and designed the sounds using the sound programme Logic Pro X.The decision to not use natural sounds was based on a pilot test of the workshop where participants were presented with both natural and artificial sounds, and where the test showed that the participants experienced that sounds from syntheses promoted the imagination more than ambiguous sounds recorded, which instead made the participants try to figure out the origin of the sounds and where they were recorded.
The final part of the workshop was a meta-reflection of the activity, which was only part of the evaluation of the method and is thus not a part of the proposed method.This part consisted of a semi-formalised focus group interview focusing on the participants' experience of the method.The participants were asked to elaborate on what they liked and disliked, how they experienced listening to sound to promote imagination and if they would like to participate in a similar workshop conducted by the municipality or by city planners.

Step 2: Creating sound fiction of the future
The second part of the proposed method consists of creating sound fictions of the future based on the insights and ideas generated during the PD workshop.The sound fictions were designed from the visions and speculations about the future of the area created during the workshop.Inspired by Chung et al. [15] who created design fiction with sound by combining atmospheric sound with objects and voices, the starting point in this step is that sound is an expression of actions affected by human interaction, the properties of objects, as well as the surrounding environment [39].A sound fiction can here be understood as a soundscape, that also contains narrative elements, telling a story about a particular place.Thus, the participants' ideas about events, materials and physical design of the place are considered in the creation of sound fictions.
Based on the results from the participatory design workshop, all ideas generated about what exists and sounds in the places were sorted into categories based on the places discussed.Even the ideas that were created with the help of inspiration from the sound cards were placed into these categories.Based on this work, a solid list was formed that contained all the ideas expressed during the workshop.This list formed the basis for sorting out the ideas that were either detailed, distinctive, created the greatest engagement or discussions, as well as the ideas that the participants agreed with.These unifying ideas formed the basis of what was included in the sound fictions.
The resulting sound fiction in this study was based on two of the places that were discussed in the participatory design workshop: the square and the centre.To shape the participants' visions of the places of the future, sounds that we recorded, sounds designed with synths and sounds from sound banks were combined.In addition, several of the trigger sounds presented through the playing cards were used in the creation of the sound fictions.Also the sound fictions were produced in Logic Pro X where the different sounds were cut, arranged, and mixed to create the stories around the places.The ambition of the creation of the sound fictions is that they should feel like real places to make it easier for the participants to imagine what it would be like to be in the fictional place of the future.Therefore, the value in an understanding of the sounds that the soundscapes consist of by using Murray Schafer's [29] three categories and Brown et al. [11] model for the structure of soundscapes was used.For the soundscapes to sound like real places, it is important to include sounds from the different categories, for example, including what the participants describe as characteristic of the place, so-called sound marks [29], and also a combination of biophonic and geophonic natural sounds in the basic tones [11,29].In addition, the inclusion of anthrophonic sounds from different categories such as ventilation, human voices, footsteps, and traffic [11] needs to be present to create a realistic atmosphere.

Step 3: Presention of sound fictions
As design fiction often ends with some form of presentation or exhibition to open up for discussions (see [3,6,15,32]), the concluding part of the participatory sound fiction process consists of a presentation for smaller groups of participants from the same area as those who participated in the PD workshop.This, as one of the advantages of design fiction, is to promote conversations that challenge and question current situations [5,23].The purpose of the presentation is to use sound fiction as a basis for discussion to open up a dialogue that can identify needs, ideas, thoughts and feelings about both the future and the present.The sound fictions were presented to a group of youths in Vårby.The semi-structured conversation was about thirty minutes and was documented through audio recordings.The participants were initially asked to listen to the created sound fictions in headphones.This was followed by a discussion where the participants were asked to describe what they had heard and what was happening in the soundscape, but also to tell what thoughts and feelings arose during the listening.The purpose of the conversation was twofold: On the one hand, it served as the concluding part of the sound fiction method, as a means for urban designers to get more insights from the participants to inform their urban design and urban planning processes.On the other hand, the discussion was also part of the research study, aiming to evaluate the potential usefulness of the sound fiction method.The conversation thus ended with the participants elaborating on how they had experienced participating to understand the participants' opinions about the method and whether they experienced the discussions as meaningful.

FINDINGS
The initial PD workshop and the subsequent design phase resulted in a designed sound fiction consisting of two soundscapes from places in a fictional Vårby in the year 2170.The two places were Vårby square in 2170 and Vårby centre in 2170, both part of a common speculative future.Accompanying each sound fiction is a written story that describes what is heard in the soundscapes.The stories were not presented to the participating youths as we strived for them to make their own interpretations of the sound fictions as they listened to them.Some insights and ideas leading up to the resulting sound fictions are summarised in Figures 2 and 3, and the final sound fiction audio can be accessed as supplementary material to this paper.The following sections account for themes that emerged in the thematic analysis, based on the initial PD workshop with participants P1-P6, and the concluding workshop discussing the sound fictions with participants P2, P7, and P8.One participant (P2) participated in both workshops.

Creating insights into the youth's realities and concerns
During the PD workshop and the presentation of the sound fictions, most of the discussions revolved around a fictional future in Vårby.However, both when the participants created fictions and when they listened to the sound fictions, the conversations started from the present, reflecting both how they perceive the area in focus and concerns that are present in their everyday lives.This can be explained by the understanding of design fiction as created in the borderland between fact and fiction, and that they are intertwined and cannot be distinguished from each other [5].During the workshop, it was possible to see that even though the ideas presented were imaginative and playful, the participants reflected on the reality and their lived experience.In line with [6] who means that even imaginative and silly ideas can be based on a common reality, an example is that the participants (P1, P3) expressed ideas about many languages being spoken in the square in the future, including a lot of Swedish and the self-invented language "Vårbyska".This can be seen as a reflection of the area today as it is a multicultural place with a large proportion of immigrants.Another example is that the subway was described as a central and obvious part of the future by several participants (P1, P3, P6), in line with what it looks like in the area today, where the subway is constantly present, especially in the soundscape of the urban area.The participants' speculations also reflected a concern for the future, exemplified for example by a participant who described a sound that they thought could be a warning alarm: "When there is war, then that one will sound.I think that will sound very often" (P4).This statement also address the ongoing war and maybe the fear of an increasing expansion of this and other wars in the youths surroundings.Accordingly, many of the expressed worries about the future were based on current issues, such as a repeatedly stated concern that the Covid-19 pandemic could exist in the future and that people would need to keep their distance from each other.One participant expressed that "I will be terrified" (P7) and another said that "there are many who will die then" (P2).Likewise, a concern raised by the participants was that a populist right-wing party would win the election, which mirrors actual political trends.Here one of the youths (P1) claimed that this would lead to unrest and demonstrations in the area.Another major concern that recurred in the participants' discussions was climate change.Two of the participants (P1, P3) described how there will be drought and one of the participants lifted when they listened to a sound clip that; "This is when it rains for the first time like this, it rains like this once a year due to the climate change since it is so dry on the ground that when the rain touches the ground, it sounds exactly like that" (P3).The participants also thought that it will be very hot in the future, and several of the participants imagined that large fans would be needed in the centre to cool down and transport fresh air.All these issues address ongoing concerns of the present, but also shows how the youth are thinking about the future in a pessimistic and dystopian way.
In the area where the participating youths live there is an ongoing discussion about police reinforcement and gang criminality, also is reflected in the youth's reflections.During the workshop, many ideas and imaginaries also included issues related to law enforcement, surveillance and control.It was repeatedly described that the sounds that were played represented the police or the police sirens.One of the first ideas expressed during the workshop was that "flying police" would be present in 2170.One participant elaborated on that statement by saying that the police would be very angry "because it is Vårby" (P6).Other imaginaries suggested controls at every door in the centre that checked that people had not taken anything (P3), or that there could be large screens that showed live recordings of the visitors in the centre (P2).Furthermore; "Those were the robots that will take over everything [...] so they let you have a life, even if they try to do something bad when they shoot you with those guns" (P5).These examples demonstrate that control was of importance for the participants, however, in which way control is important is difficult to interpret based solely on the presented imaginaries.Here some of the participants clearly understood this vision of the future as something problematic and dystopic, like "a kind of prison" (P7), while others highlighted control as something positive, ensuring safety and reducing crime.
Based on these utterances it can be assumed that the present was constantly there in the speculations about the future, which conveys insights into their perception of the area today.Although the ideas that developed during the PD workshop were fictional, they were all a reaction to the reality in which the participants live and act.This ambiguity in the speculative context helps to create a subtle approach between the unreal and the real, as noted by [19].The ambiguity of the sounds used in sound fictions may have been a contributing factor to the discussions moving even more clearly in the borderland between the fictional future and the present.Here, design fiction has the potential to open up to create new discussions that can challenge the status quo or increase political commitment [23].It is clear from the results that when the participants discussed the sound fiction, they also questioned prevailing situations.As design fiction can support reflection on what is a desirable future, the participants valued and compared society today with the society presented in the sound fictions.It has also been argued that the modality of sound also has the potential to encourage people to question everyday situations [20].

Sound as means to arouse imagination and broaden perspectives
At the end of the presentation, one of the participants concluded that in the sound fictions it does not really sound like there is such a big difference between the present and the future: P8: "So it really sounded like an everyday life.[. . .] It just feels renewed.More modern".P7: "If you think about it.These are the same old routines.So, this is exactly the case with the police.It is the same old thing that happens [...] exactly the same action but with different things that do it".
This quote nicely illustrates the difficulty of envisioning the future, where you easily end up in "the same old thing [. . .] but with different things that do it.", where many underlying structures and value systems stay the same, and where only particular artefacts are replaced or refined.The study, however, also gave more encouraging results, indicating that sound fictions have the potential to encourage imagination and reflection in the participants.The participants expressed many fantasies based on the sounds they heard.The results showed that when the participants fantasised, the conversations were about aspects beyond everyday life and the participants were not bound by today's physical and technical limitations, especially when using abstract and non-descriptive sounds.Some examples of fantasies that were expressed were that "everything is metal", there are "robot notes" and that "you can teleport".Another fantasy that was aroused was that "this sounds like the duck world took over Vårby or something.The ducks down by the water they took over" (P3).One of the participants mainly fantasised about everything in the future being flying, where some examples expressed were: "flying cars", "flying kebabs", "flying bus stops" and "flying playing football" (P6).
During the PD workshop, the participants expressed that they experienced listening to sound helped to evoke and promote imagination.One participant made comparisons to the experience that "it's like when you read and get a picture in your head" and that "you create your own film" (P3).Others described that listening to sound triggered imagination and made him start thinking about other things (P4) and that listening to sound "helped with the imagination" and made them come up with more ideas (P5).Five of the participants (P1, P3, P4, P5, P6) argued that it was easier to listen to sound cards than to think freely because it triggered their imagination.One of the participants, however, did not agree and felt that the sounds did not help to strengthen imagination and that they liked watching (audiovisual) movies more (P2), which contrasts with the conception that sound can contribute to imagination and experiences beyond what the visual can achieve [15], rather stating that the combination and audio and visuals are superior.
At the presentation of the sound fictions, a participant emphasised that they liked "that I got pictures in my head" (P8).Another expressed that something positive about listening to the sound fictions was that they got "a lot of thoughts", but also that "it becomes automatic that you get pictures" (P7).There were also many accounts where participants made different interpretations of the sounds played.One sound was described by different participants as the sound of "a hand dryer", "a shot" and "an online payment".Another sound was described as the sound of "a water park", and as "this is the sky, the clouds".The participants sometimes discussed with each other the interpretation of the sounds when they had different opinions about what they represent: P6: "This is how it sounds. . ." P1: "No it sounds like a really bad rapper" P6: ". . .when you are in a tunnel and then the train passes by" P2: "No I think you can teleport, because you hear. . ." P6: "Wallah no" In addition, it also happened on several occasions that the participants built on each other's ideas, such as in the following excerpt: P6: "Airplane!"P4: "Warplane!"P3: "I think that will be the sound when Vårby goes under" P5: "So everyone will be scared" P3: "I think that the sound is a secret bunker opens during Vårby school" Here it became clear that the initial workshop with random abstract sounds allowed for more free associations than the finished sound fictions presented at the final workshop, as expressed by one of the participants, who mentioned that after listening to the sound fictions, it felt difficult to be able to come up with their own picture of the places that were designed and expressed "this is kind of what you will think of now" (P8).It is possible that this participant had already made their own interpretation of the places and formed a personal picture that was not in line with the soundscape presented in the sound fiction.
The final sound fictions were also created using a mix of abstract and more descriptive natural sounds.Here, the participants' interpretations of the sound fictions were mainly based on the parts that were not ambiguous.For example, when the participants would tell what they had heard in the sound fiction of Vårby square in 2170, they described the course of events in the sound mainly connected to the sounds that were clear such as people talking, police sirens, and an important message that was read out.Even though the more abstract sounds stimulated fantasy and speculation, not all the participants appreciated the ambiguity, such as P2, arguing that "there was not much that was understood".Illustrating that some ambiguous designs can be perceived as merely confusing, frustrating, or meaningless [21], which was the case for this specific participant.
In sum, the results showed that the participants, by listening to sound fictions, could look at their immediate environment from new perspectives.One of the participants described that the sound fictions "aroused thoughts that have not really been thought of" (P7).The design space around the home environment is limited because it is familiar and that defamiliarisation can help to broaden the perspective on the familiar environment [4].Through this study, we argue that the sound fiction activities helped to defamiliarise Vårby for the participants.The places were no longer perceived as the Vårby that the participants were used to and therefore space was created for reflections and new perspectives.

Empowerment, commitment, and meaningful participation
Although most participants expressed a positive response to the method, the participants' commitment and involvement in the activities varied.During the first workshop, some of the participants only half-heartedly participated, sometimes taking an active part in the discussions, and sometimes losing concentration and focusing on other things.Later, the degree of commitment changed during the workshop.For some participants, it took a while to warm up and become comfortable with expressing their ideas.It was possible to see that the participants initially had a harder time indulging in fantasising freely and sometimes they laughed at each other's ideas, which hampered the space for imagination.However, this was something that changed when the participants went more wholeheartedly into the premises of the workshop.
The group dynamics had a great impact on the degree of commitment and the participants' relationship with each other might have had an impact on the interaction.On the one hand, the playfulness in creating fictional futures had value in that the participants perceived the workshop as fun and that it created commitment.On the other hand, since the participants only described the workshop as fun, interesting and different, it might be that the participants only saw it as a playful opportunity rather than something that helped them to be heard.The participants' fantasies revealed important insights about their reality, but the participants themselves reported not sharing their own reality through their fantasies.It is therefore unclear to which extent the process contributed to a sense of empowerment.
Even though the participants did not seem to think that they could have any actual impact on their situation, they still perceived it as a meaningful activity and expressed that "one can debate about this (.) everyone has different opinions about this" (P4), Highlighting that it is an important discussion to have.The following quote also highlights that the activity evoked personal reflections about topics relating to the future, that rarely surface in everyday discussions: "It evoked ideas, it evoked thoughts that you have not really thought about.Because it is very rare for someone from here to think what it will look like for me in 20 years, or what it will look like in 20 years.So it is very, very rare to think so" (P7)

Sound fiction in urban design
The study shows that there are both aspects that speak for and against the use of participatory sound fiction in urban design and urban planning processes.On the one hand, sound is mostly understood in terms of noise in urban planning processes today [18,26].This particular view of sound in urban design may stand in the way of implementing approaches with other understandings of sound in urban design.Sound design is also described as somewhat unprofitable, where there is uncertainty about what working with sound can provide [36].This perception could mean that there is resistance to collaborating with designers through participatory sound fiction as the method requires time and resources to generate value.On the other hand, it has been shown that there is a curiosity and openness to work with sound in urban planning processes and a willingness to incorporate participatory approaches [36].Our study revealed both major themes such as concerns about crime and control, as well as minor needs which could create value in urban planning processes by contributing to the understanding of the people for whom the city is designed.The method has the potential to arouse empathy for the youth and an understanding of their reality by opening up space for sharing sensitive topics and worries about the future.
In the study, the participants were asked to speculate freely about the future, not limiting themselves to what is technically possible today or how they would like the future to be.The method therefore did not reveal explicit wishes about the city's design, which might lead to a reluctance in urban design processes aiming for realistic and implementable solutions.Blythe et al. [6] suggest that silly design fiction has value precisely because it can open up discussions that fully explore the problem space and can show that complex societal problems should not always be solved with the help of technology.From this perspective, the playfulness of participatory sound fiction has value precisely because it does not focus on solutions but instead manages to reveal and create discussions about real experiences and problems.Fantasising and speculating in a playful way helped to create a distance to reality and in this way, the participants may have been more inclined to open up about problems in the area.In addition, the playfulness contributed to the method being perceived as different and fun, which was an important part of creating commitment in the moment and making them more likely to want to be involved in future urban design projects.

The qualities of participatory design fiction
One of the most prominent results from our study is how speculations of the future may serve as a bridge to the present and discover important themes in youth's reality today.The connection between fact and fiction is one of the strengths of design fiction [5], and the analysis shows that the participants' speculations about the future were based on the present.Previous research [6] have also shown that even imaginative and silly ideas are based on the participants' common reality and constitute a reaction to real problems.As demonstrated here, participatory sound fiction can function as a method able to spark discussions about youths everyday lives, reducing the threshold for discussing sensitive topics.Design fiction can create a debate that challenges the prevailing view of society [23].As clearly discerned in the results, the participating youths through the use of the method discussed and reflected on their immediate area both in general and linked to current specific events.The participants problematised the society in which they live and questioned power structures and society's view of them as youths living in a vulnerable area.This shows the strength of participatory sound fiction in promoting reflection on the design of society, which can help to create an understanding of the problem space.
The study also shows many benefits to involving sound in participatory processes as it can promote new ideas, thoughts, perspectives, and discussion.In the results, the use of sound as a starting point for discussions is favourable as the participants could speculate and reflect both based on short ambiguous sounds, and also on the basis of the longer sound fictions.As Cheng et al. [14] and Chung et al. [15] show, sound is a working means of promoting imagination and creativity in people.The short sound clips showed special strength in their ambiguity, as the participants were given the opportunity to form their personal interpretations and inner images.The advantage of ambiguity in design is that it enables people to interpret and form personal relationships with the design themselves [21].The ambiguity in the sounds, though, was an obstacle as it was especially difficult for the participants to fantasise and reflect on sounds that could mean anything.The study demonstrates that the participants, by listening to sound, experience their immediate area in different ways.Sound, and specifically sound fiction, can be seen to defamiliarise the local area for youth, helping them to broaden their perspectives on the familiar [4].The fact that several participants felt that they gained new perspectives around the area under study shows that creating narratives inspired by science fiction leads to the participants being able to look at their familiar situation from a new angle [32].

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this study shows how the method, participatory sound fiction, could be productively used to engage youth in urban planning processes.Also, it suggests that discussions should be anchored in the present to provide a meaningful exchange of ideas.The results show that through discussion and speculation about the future, important insights can be revealed about the youths' reality, which can be of value in urban planning processes.Furthermore, the study found that sound can broaden youths' perspective on their immediate environment, and it can engage youths.Yet, we identify a challenge in methods based on speculating about the future, as the young participants preferred to discuss the present situation in order to feel that their voices are being heard.
Participatory sound fiction combines three theoretical starting points: participatory design, design fiction and sound design.This means several factors have been important in creating the method, including enabling participants' contributions and sense of autonomy, encouraging participants to see everyday life from a new perspective, and the capability of sound to induce fantasies, emotions, and discussion.
The study shows that the method, in addition to supporting discussions that generate important insights about youth's everyday lives, can also reveal insights regarding their experiences of the local area and concerns about the future.Discussions and reflections are supported both by letting youth speculate about what the future might be like and by discussing with each other based on sound fiction.In this way, it becomes possible for youth to look at their immediate area from a new perspective, which evokes thoughts and reflections.Both the fantasies and reflections that are expressed reflect important themes as well as the youths' thoughts and feelings about their reality.
Finally, the discussions and important insights that participatory sound fiction can generate and create opportunities to contribute to urban planning processes by creating an understanding of the youth who live in the city.There is an openness about collaboration in projects that include sound, but limitations in knowledge, time and money as well as a lack of understanding about the benefits of working with sound can mean that there is resistance to using the method in practice.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Illustration of the three steps of participatory sound fiction

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Image representing the various ideas from the youths that inspired the first sound fiction illustrating Vårby Square in 2170

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Image representing the various ideas from the youths that inspired the second sound fiction illustrating Vårby Centre