When the city wakes the dead – silence, noise pollution, and politics within the contemporary French cemetery
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24224925 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Louis Dall'Aglio (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (Lyon, France)) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 81 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 361-373 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geographica Helvetica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-7312 • E-ISSN: 2194-8798 |
| Publisher | Copernicus GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.5194/gh-81-361-2026 |
| OpenAlex | W7167217726 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
This article underlines how cemeteries, despite being designed and managed as silent spaces, have recently started to see their soundscapes become increasingly entangled with the surrounding urban noise. I propose an analysis of the soundscape produced by local cemetery rules and regulations from the Lyon metropolitan area (France) through the lenses of legal geography before contrasting their normative ambitions with observed noise data. I then discuss those results' meaning through reference to H. Lefebvre's Right to the city (1968) and C. Chivallon's definition of the “in-human” (2023). The dead, as a socially produced category of people or things who or which, despite being granted a legal status that should shield them from degradation, lack the ability to leverage legal resources and are consequently deprived of their right to the city. While local rules and regulations aim to produce a silent soundscape, actual noise data show that contemporary urban cemeteries, because of their geographical locations within the metropolis, are noisier than expected.
cemeteries · cemetery regulations · Dead · legal geography · Lyon metropolitan area · noise data · Right to the city · Silence · Soundscape · urban cemeteries · urban noise · Noise Effects and Management · Sound Studies and Aurality · Urban Planning and Governance
The Rural Lawscape
Social Power and the Urbanization of Water
Auditory and non-auditory effects of noise on health
The Future of Urban Cemeteries as Public Spaces
« Des espaces autres »
Defining the place of burial
Law’s Spatial Turn
We do have space in Lausanne. We have a large cemetery’
Introduction. Between Absence and Presence
Hearing the silence
Cemetaries and Columbaria, Memorials and Mausoleums
Beyond geography's visible worlds
Governing the noisy sphere
Cemeteries are active urban resonant places, or are they not
The dead as property marker
La ville, le bruit et le son, entre mesure policière et identités urbaines
Sacred Spaces, Common Places
Away from the border and into the frontier
Queer Ecology
Sounding Out Borderscapes
Le droit du défunt
| Highly cited | No |
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