Trond Maag is an urbanist. He studied civil engineering sciences in Switzerland and urbanism in Norway. He initiates citymaking projects and performs multidisciplinary studies, workshops and research to support masterplans and architectural projects. The main focus of his work is on urban sound and urbanism. He uses soundwalks and workshops as tools to initiate processes and discussions around urban qualities. His work on the acoustic quality of the urban public realm was awarded with the runner-up of the European Soundscape Award 2013 by the European Environment Agency. He is a member of the research staff at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment.

His hypothesis and experience is that listening, in particular when performed in soundwalks, contributes to planning and designing the everyday city. Soundwalks complement construction plans, noise maps, and mock-ups. In particular, they give local people a chance to get involved in the design process. Professional participants get a chance to synchronise their ideas and sound quality judgements about a specific place. Soundwalks are achievable steps of «citymaking» because the participants communicate the idea of a place's audible qualities to other acoustic actors of the city.