## 5 Conclusions and Perspectives  
Understanding the soundscapes of open spaces is essential for promoting good soundscapes in residential areas. However, due to a lack of relevant studies, soundscape issues are ignored in high-density residential areas. This study provides empirical insights into soundscape research through a case study in the Shenzhen OCT ecological square. Using in situ observations, measurements, and surveys, the characteristics of the acoustic environment were explored. According to the sound sources and landscape features, the soundscapes were easily identified in the four blocks of the study site in which different activities were observed. In this study, soundscape evaluations of annoyance and acoustic comfort and their influencing factors were intensively investigated. The results are summarized as follows:  
1. Soundscape identification is useful to preliminarily determine subjective evaluations of annoyance and acoustic comfort. Generally speaking, a place with a more natural soundscape is usually perceived to be less noisy and to provide more acoustic comfort but a place with a more artificial soundscape is not perceived to be noisier or to provide acoustic discomfort. This might be related to the spatial function, which has some influence. 2. For the acoustic comfort evaluations, it is interesting to note that the block with an artificial soundscape (BLK-I) was perceived to provide more acoustic comfort than the block with a neutral-to-natural soundscape (BLK-II), although the former was perceived to be noisier than the latter. This result implies that identifying a soundscape based solely on the in situ sound source and landscape observations may be reliable but imprecise. 3. For the blocks with more artificial soundscapes, higher sound levels resulted in better soundscape evaluations, whereas in the blocks with more natural soundscapes, higher sound levels resulted in worse soundscape evaluations. Such a conflict might be related to the place's spatial function. * It is noteworthy that although acoustic factors have some influence on subjective evaluations, a non-acoustic factor, the spatial function, may have an influence that should be considered in a future study. * By researching soundscape identification, evaluations, and influencing factors, this study suggests that sound sources and landscapes are essential for determining the soundscapes in high-density residential open spaces. However, understanding the relationships between soundscapes and spatial functions is useful when evaluating a soundscape. In this study, analysis of the effects of spatial functions on soundscapes was performed qualitatively but not quantitatively. Therefore, further works will be required to investigate the spatial function and its relationships with other factors. The following supporting information can be downloaded at [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14166946/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14166946/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14166946/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14166946/s1)), Investigation questionnaire; Table S1: Characteristics and attributes of four blocks in OCT ecological square; Table S2: A regression analysis of influencing factors and soundscape evaluations. Conceptualization, M.Y. and L.Y. ; Data curation, Z.X. ; Formal analysis, Z.X. ; Funding acquisition, L.Y. ; Investigation, Z.X. ; Methodology, Z.X., M.Y. and L.Y. ; Project administration, L.Y. ; Resources, M.Y. ; Supervision, L.Y. ; Validation, M.Y. and L.Y. ; Visualization, Z.X. ; Writing--original draft, L.Y. ; Writing--review and editing, Z.X. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (grant number 7137106). This research was also funded by the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (grants JCYJ20140430142951405 and JCYJ201605311914Z7098).