The Portland, Ore. park is the first urban park in the U.S. to earn a Quiet Parks International designation.
Mount Tabor Park is only two miles from my home in Portland, Oregon. I’ve spent countless hours crisscrossing trails leading over this extinct volcano and admiring reflections off the historic reservoirs encircled by wrought iron fencing. The park was even the site of my first date with my husband. So I was excited to hear about its newest distinction: Quiet Parks International (QPI) has certified Mt. Tabor Park as the first urban quiet park in the United States. The nine other urban quiet parks recognized by QPI are in Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Taiwan, and the UK.
QPI is a volunteer-run organization, founded in 2018 by user experience designer Vikram Chauhanandacoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton. Its goal is to save the world’s quiet places, both in urban and wilderness settings.
“Our mission is to save quiet for the benefit of all life,” Hempton told me, “because not only is quiet important for our own wellbeing, but it’s a necessary natural resource for wildlife that need to communicate. Obviously they don’t have cell phones or texts. Their only choice is to use this shared acoustic environment.”
QPI certifies several different types of public places: wilderness quiet parks, urban quiet parks, quiet trails, quiet conservation areas and, coming soon, quiet marine parks. Each has its own set of criteria. “One of the things required in wilderness parks is the absolute absence of noise pollution,” Hempton said. “But we know that that’s not going to happen in an urban area because basically transportation noise travels for many miles in every direction.” QPI uses instruments like decibel counters, along with an array of low-tech ways to assess quiet. “In the quietest place at Mount Tabor, if you reach your hand out and you rub your fingers against a salal leaf, for example, do you hear a sound?” Hempton asks. “If you then reach over to a blackberry leaf and rub your fingers, do you hear a different sound?” Other low-tech tests include whether you can hold a whispered conversation with a friend, and whether you’re able to distinguish the individual voice of one Pacific wren from another.
Jacob Schmidt, a bioacoustician for the United States Forest Service, evaluated Mount Tabor for urban quiet park status. “I spent much of last year — at least a day a week — measuring in there,” Schmidt told me. He thought it was important to qualify Mount Tabor because it’s easily accessible by public transportation, so anybody who wants some quiet can get there. He admits it’s not the quietest park in Portland. “But it has the qualities that make for a serene listening experience in a park. Because with urban quiet parks, you will hear human noise, too. It’s not the complete absence of that. But more the harmony, the marriage of the noises that are natural to that space in the park.”
QPI’s website lists a number of benefits of certifying urban quiet parks, from connecting local children to nature to helping create park guidelines and management practices. QPI got some unexpected help from the pandemic, when people experienced more quiet than they were accustomed to. “Pre-pandemic, the most common question we received at Quiet Parks International was ‘why is quiet important?’” Hempton said. “Nobody asks us that anymore. Now they ask us, ‘how can we be next?’”
What You Can Do
Certification starts with a nomination. Anyone can fill out this form to alert QPI to a notable quiet place. The organization will give you simple instructions for low-tech tests you can do to pre-qualify your favorite quiet locations.
