Tranquility
Tranquillity
is a fast diminishing and non-renewable resource in today's rapidly changing world. The Council for the
Protection of Rural England has undertaken a process known as tranquillity mapping and
have contrasted the state of noise in the environment in the 1960s with that of 1990s.
Figures 1 and 2 are reproduced from the CPRE website (http://www.cpre.org.uk/policy/rural/tranquil/index.htm). They show the progressive
loss of
tranquil places; each centre of noise pollution has spread out to absorb its
hinterland. Once
a tranquil place has been contaminated it is increasingly polluted.
The
criteria on which the map was based seem fairly lax when we think of the environment in Mid Wales.
The criteria were as follows.
�Tranquil
Areas are places which are sufficiently far away from the visual or noise intrusion of development or traffic
to be considered
unspoilt by urban influences. They are determined by distances from the
various disturbing factors listed below. Deciding on the distances has been an iterative process of comparison between each type
of disturbance in the field.
The maps
provide a broad brush picture of areas in the countryside which are free from urban
intrusion.