A couple articles on noise

September 6, 2022 10:12 AM

I came across these two different articles on noise recently. One talks about the negative impacts of industrial and road noise on animals, and the other talks about gentrification vs the joys of human noise.

Archive versions: joy, quiet

Just for fun, I tried to include in this post a video of an evening cacophany of parrots but I couldn't find one?!

posted by aniola (54 comments total)

For the counter-argument to the "Joys of Human Noise" article - I am simply going to point to several AskMe's from people who are legitimately distrubed by loud noise from neighbors.

Yes, I agree that some people who complain about "human noise" like talking or laughing or music are snooty busybodies. But some are people with young or sick kids who are trying to sleep, some are sick themselves, some work the night shift, some are writers/musicians/artists who work from home and are trying to concentrate, etc. Sometimes it isn't necessarily a gentrification or "wypipo" thing.

And while I'm also honestly puzzled that someone snarked at the author for using a discman in the library (how the hell would you know it was being used unless you were watching for it?), I also think something with headphones is honestly better than the dude who brought an entire radio complete with two stereo speakers on a handcart into the subway and blasted thrash metal for the entire ride from Coney Island up to Midtown, and tried to strike up a conversation with a couple fishermen and yelled to be heard. I trust it's not only gentrifiers who would see the logic of "maybe if you turned down your radio you could hear what the nice fishermen are trying to say to you".

And yes, I know I sound like one of the very gentrifiers that are being talked about in this article - however, I don't think it's quite that simple, is all.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:37 AM on September 6, 2022 [22 favorites]

I came across the second article, about gentrification and quiet, in an answer to yesterday's AskMe about living across from a bar. It's quite a compelling read, and rings completely true--I live in Boston, and our NIMBYs are second-to-none with noise complaints. I get NextDoor messages constantly from people who are angry that they moved onto the approach path to the region's largest airport; who are appalled that the restaurant they moved above would dare to exercise its license for live music; who wish gruesome fates upon folks setting off fireworks more than 3 days away from July 4th; and so on. My neighborhood in particular has gentrified incredibly quickly, so now we get the added bonus of seeing the new wave of gentrifiers (I really, really like the framing in the article of people who live vs. reside somewhere) vent spleen against the subsidized housing that has been here for 50+ years blaring music after dark.

I admit I'm kind of biased in my view, though. I'm currently dealing with a downstairs neighbor with wildly unreasonable expectations of what city living is, mostly centered around noise. In the five years before these folks moved in, I had exchanged contact info with the previous tenants and told them to text or call if it was ever too loud, and they did so... twice, maybe? Both times totally warranted, and both times we immediately turned down the racket/sent guests home, because hey, we're all in this together, no reason to be a jerk to your neighbors. Since the new tenants moved in last year, I'd say we're averaging 3-4 complaints a week, for a wide host of reasons that I'll summarize as "we have two small kids."

Y'all, it is fucking exhausting. Can you imagine getting that many complaints, about totally reasonable things you do as part of your day? Can you picture the anxiety it produces in otherwise-functional humans when you're suddenly keenly aware that the neighbors are listening carefully to your every move, pen poised over paper to document this latest transgression? And I'm a white guy who isn't renting! What if I had to answer to a landlord, or get hassled by the cops for being Noisy While Brown? I've given up hope of trying to reach any kind of agreement with them, because it's not fundamentally a question of noise ordinances--it's a question of control over one's own space, and a disconnect between what real estate prices are and what buying a place in the city means. I'm in the process of lawyering up, because I refuse to walk on eggshells in my own house.

So yeah, excessive noise sucks, but so do the people who move into neighborhoods and demand that their own weird customs be treated as law.
posted by Mayor West at 11:02 AM on September 6, 2022 [22 favorites]

I'm currently dealing with a neighbor with wildly unreasonable expectations of what city living is

Myself, I left the city and moved into a house with apparently wildly unreasonable expectations of what suburban living means (specifically regarding the barking of dogs).

Note that both of the OP's articles are from The Atlantic.
posted by Rash at 11:21 AM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Honestly, my mind was blown just by the idea that gentrification could be (and often is) silence.

I live in a downtown neighbourhood that was once described as being "in transition" when we bought a home there in 2015. Now I'd say it's fully transitioned in terms of residents, but there are still outliers who drink beer and converse loudly in their yards, firecrackers going off for no holiday at all, unhoused folks passing through yelling, and the occasional barking dog. It's fine by me. I lived in Grant Park/Cabbagetown/Candler Park when I was single as an adult in Atlanta, so I know city noise. City noise is what it is. I grew up in the suburbs so I am okay with city noise.

But now I know--with houses going for over half a mil now and a nearby home converted in 300CAD a night AirBnB--that it's much more quiet around here when we moved in. I just never paid attention before. Gentrifiers often want quiet in a busy place; a glance at our neighbourhood's FB page is testament to the fact that people who can afford to buy these homes now want a clean and shiny downtown life experience. No noise, no homeless, nothing but yoga studios and bespoke pizza parlours (real examples).
posted by Kitteh at 11:36 AM on September 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

Interestingly my block's gotten louder in the 13 years I've been here, despite becoming unquestionably richer, largely because a lot of older retired folks have been replaced with families who have kids who play in the street all the time. I don't love all the ugly new construction, but the people seem nice and inclined toward participating in civic life. (This is not to unproblematize gentrification; this neighborhood was pretty white before and remains so, it's mostly richer, younger, and yuppier now. I do not know where the displaced seniors have ended up but they made a bunch selling their houses.)

The other thing about noise re: the neighbor noise disturbances chronicled in AskMe (one of which I wrote) -- there's a lot of different kinds of city noise. I'm a windows-open kind of girl. I like hearing the birds and kids playing and the neighbor's guitar and even airplanes. But man, the sound of someone running laps on hardwood floors in my uninsulated converted building at 4 a.m. is something I hope to never experience again!

In any case the "you live in a city though" stuff has to go both ways. Living in a city means you accept lots of noise from human beings and their various creations; it also means that you are perhaps not entitled to make the maximum amount of noise at all times. I try really hard to be a good neighbor, which means ensuring that I'm not the reason my neighbors can't sleep. I know lots of musicians who limit their practice time -- not eliminate it, but also they're not playing the tuba at 1 a.m. Someone who desires midnight tuba practice (or 4 a.m. hardwood floor running) should move to the suburbs, just like the folks who complain about the occasional dog bark, engine rev, or crying kid.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 11:52 AM on September 6, 2022 [22 favorites]

I've lived in a number of gentrifying places and I absolutely can't stand it when people move into a vibrant arts or music district because they want to live somewhere lively and fun and then they immediately start complaining about music and noise from the venues they chose to live right next to, or even in the same building, and this is really annoying and lame.

One of the most fun places I ever lived was an art/music collective where the first house rule was no complaints about noise or making music. Wake up at 3 AM and can't sleep and want to go blast some techno on the sound system? Want to DJ for three days straight? Go for it. Don't like it? You're definitely in the wrong place, because we're there to be able to do that and it's the whole reason the collective space existed.

The one single time I complained about noise at this place was when one of my fellow residents decided to set up a full drum kit outside in the garden at like 2-3 AM and start wailing on it. I personally didn't really care about the noise itself because I slept through much worse, but that's a total dick move to the neighbors who barely tolerated us to begin with and a total blow it, especially since we had multiple indoor spaces for making that kind of noise at those hours.

Where I live now is very, very quiet and I enjoy that very much, but I still have a personal and very strict "no complaining about music" policy. A few weeks ago my younger housemates had some friends over and they were jamming and playing on the piano until like 3 in the morning and I liked that just fine.

Just about the only noise I will complain about is stuff like fighting, slamming doors in anger or other noises of aggression, which doesn't really happen here. Also not a fan of gunfire but that's part of living outside of city limits in a rural place.

Or leaf blowers. Fuck leaf blowers. Also wasn't a fan of living next to a fire station in a city, but what are you going to do about that?
posted by loquacious at 11:57 AM on September 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I absolutely can't stand it when people move into a vibrant arts or music district because they want to live somewhere lively and fun and then they immediately start complaining about music and noise from the venues they chose to live right next to, or even in the same building, and this is really annoying and lame.

Oh this is HUGE. The number of people who move next door to 4 a.m. bars and then get mad that they moved next to a 4 a.m. bar!! You knew it was there!! It was there first!! (Ditto people who lose their minds about flight paths honestly. this has been a big thing in my neighborhood and 95% of the time it's from folks who moved here AFTER they changed the flight path to go over us. You knew this when you moved in! You could have picked any other neighborhood.)
posted by goodbyewaffles at 12:00 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

My part of South LA experiences year-round fireworks; not countdown-to-the-4th fireworks, but all year long, and not firecrackers at dusk, but nerve-shredding class-A “bunker-buster” fireworks that set off car alarms for blocks around well into the night.

Nobody is ever going to do anything about it. In a neighborhood that is still associated with drive-by shootings, police violence and stark poverty, it stands to reason that illegal fireworks are simply not a priority.

But they’re awful. While we’ve been careful not to over-react, we’ve gently broached the topic with some of our neighbors. What hear from them is a combination of weary resignation (because let’s face it: the only people who like the fireworks are the ones setting them off) and low-key defensiveness: the noise is part of living here, and when you criticize the noise you criticize our community.

We have come to accept that point of view and have learned to keep our frustration to ourselves, but at a cost. It feels phony to have to bite our tongues about a nuisance that we know so many of neighbors find deeply irritating. And I bet it also also feels phony to those neighbors who feel the need to circle the wagons and, if not defend the fireworks, then at least deflect any criticism back on the newcomers. But that’s politics, I guess.
posted by ducky l'orange at 12:06 PM on September 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

I didn't know that two of my neighbors had drum sets in their garage until 2020. They were playing a few times a week from 4-6 PM. It's totally fine though - much preferable to the 4 AM car-revvers and the noises that are probably gunshots but aren't like, that close so don't worry about it.
posted by meowzilla at 12:10 PM on September 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

On review, “circle the wagons” was a clearly terrible choice of phrase that undermines my whole point. My bad.
posted by ducky l'orange at 12:13 PM on September 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

Really like sleeping [ street racing on Jarvis at 3am ] in the Toronto [ someone singing along to music, badly ] Village [ cats hoping to fuck ] with the windows [ oh the Leafs scored a goal did they] open. [ guy with emphysema coughs for five minutes ] Sometimes we hear [ dogs greeting each other ] unpleasant things [ angry guy shouting ] but generally [ couple breaking up with much drama ] the sounds of city [ leaf blowers that sound like 50-foot tall monks ] life are calming [ people having a party on their balcony, laughing Too Loud ] and soothing. [ sirens, echoing off the buildings ] We're part [ firecrackers? probably ] of a community! [ drag patio event on church st ]

Not sarcastic at all. I used to live in the boonies and while that's a peaceful kind of quiet, it's also a lonely quiet.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:13 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I live in the sticks, maybe 50 people within a mile. Lots of time, there are only natural noises, especially at night and on weekends. But, you can hear trucks engine breaking on the highway a mile away, you can hear airplanes flying into the local airfield, medevac helicopters, fireworks, gunfire, snowmobiles, construction equipment beeping. The quieter it is, the easier it is to disturb.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:20 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Soo ... I love go go. But that store's speaker was LOUD all day/all night on the sidewalk. There's no reason not to compromise! As is common in DC, at least one local elected official (ANC) who advocated for the noise to be reduced was an African American DC-born woman. You can enjoy and celebrate, and also turn the music down at 10pm on weeknights. I have never found the "gentrifier/local" divide to reflect anything close to the truth when it comes down to the nitty gritty of neighborhood politics.
posted by haptic_avenger at 1:14 PM on September 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I genuinely don't mind human noises overall. Hearing students in the house down the road having a lawn party, kids playing in yards, back yard bbqs etc. It lets you know that you're in a place that's alive. What I have a harder time dealing with is people who adopt/buy dogs then leave them alone, outside all day long. I'm approaching my wits end with the neighbors who bought 3 purebred boxers and then leave them outside in their fenced yard from 6am to 11pm or later every day, barking nearly non-stop the whole time. What's the point of having a dog if you're never going to interact with it?
posted by Ferreous at 1:22 PM on September 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

I have no sympathy or mercy for the two am window rattling car stereos. I don't even care if that makes me a bad person. I will wish gruesome consequences upon them always.
posted by Jacen at 1:23 PM on September 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

"New Neighbors and the Over-Policing of Communities of Color: An Analysis of NYPD-Referred 311 Complaints in New York City". I've assigned this 2019 article/report to urban planning students (and assume it's referenced in the article).
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:32 PM on September 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

Also I have a secondhand story from a very reliable source of a person in SF who complained about the school bell and recess noise and demanded the city do something about it. Yes, it is startling when high-pitched shrieks interrupt your conference call but you moved next to an elementary school.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:32 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

who wish gruesome fates upon folks setting off fireworks more than 3 days away from July 4th

Fireworks are really hard on animals. I spent several months gently encouraging a very anxious rescue dog to get acclimated to my extremely noisy Manhattan neighborhood. He was making decent progress. It was all blown up, almost literally, by some motherfuckers shooting fireworks in the middle of the afternoon into a local bodega a block away. A minute of antisocial entertainment, and now the dog is too afraid to go outside.

I accept that July 4 and NY's Eve are going to bring fireworks. You can make arrangements for two days a year if you need to. But there are plenty of people in the neighborhood who haven't enjoyed all the freelance fireworks of the past two-plus years.

I believe in being conscious of informal neighborhood norms, and trying to be neighborly. That doesn't mean my household still doesn't have basic needs. I keep seeing these recurring assumptions that anything unpleasant happening in a poor neighborhood must be welcomed by the residents. That's kind of a dumb filter and the sort of belief you can only have if you don't live in a poor or even mixed neighborhood.
posted by praemunire at 1:51 PM on September 6, 2022 [16 favorites]

Maybe it's just me, but I tend to think most people don't like noise unless they're the one making it.
(Of course, if you go to a rock concert you're not making the noise, but you have specifically gone to the concert, so it's not 'noise'.)
At the beach or in a park, there's often someone who assumes everyone wants to listen to their idea of good music. Car stereos and exhaust noise bug me, but it's usually only for a short time.
In an article I read this week about electric cars, it was mentioned that electric muscle cars will duplicate the loud sounds of gas engines electronically.

One thing I appreciated when I was working in an office was that everyone had their own earphones.
...and the other Atlantic link reminded me to appreciate the fact that, though I don't live in a wilderness area, I still get to see the Milky Way a lot.
posted by MtDewd at 1:52 PM on September 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I live near a set of train tracks that does not have the infrastructure to make it a Quiet Zone, so trains are mandated by law to blast their horns at a minimum 96 dB for every street crossing (sadly, a few people still die every year). The apartments right next to the tracks have an impressive amount of noise reduction, including double double-paned windows (four sheets of glass).

The train noise is one of the more common complaints from people who moved to the area, for decades. Despite train noise being a known health issue (2002), the city hasn't really taken the steps (and money) to make it into a quiet zone until this year.

While I understand why people would be mocked for complaining about old trains, I don't agree with people on Nextdoor and the like who actually say they like the noise and say it's part of the charm. It just seems to be one of the things that we could actually fix, unlike many other intractable problems.
posted by meowzilla at 2:21 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Maybe it's just me, but I tend to think most people don't like noise unless they're the one making it.

I think the people making noise and the people experiencing the noise may sometimes be having different Umwelts (which are described in the first article). Or something like that.
posted by aniola at 2:55 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Before he was mrfeet, my spouse lived near my workplace, a school. (Relevant for later.) The school began to use music as a cue for "the bell is going to ring" at the end of break times like recess and lunch. Since it is a school weirdly spread over two campuses, the speakers were set to be pretty broad.
"We got a noise complaint" the assistant principal said. "The weird thing was it said 'if I'm not allowed to play music, then they shouldn't either" and I suddenly knew who it was: mrfeet's neighbour who was fond of rehearsing metal loudly and badly late into the night. They got into the habit of calling a complaint in as soon as 11pm rolled around and he wasn't stopping.
posted by freethefeet at 3:01 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

We could regulate industries causing sensory pollution - this was near the bottom of the first article.

Industry and road noise seem to cause most of the actual sound pollution. Large-scale commercial noise pollution is worth scrutiny.
posted by aniola at 3:23 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I like most urban noise. I actually enjoy the heavy bass cars, for example. There's a restaurant close by that has live music on their patio every Friday and Saturday nights. It's always terrible -- bad cover bands, bad blues-rock, just generally bad -- and I can hear it clearly with the windows shut. But it is happy noise and people are enjoying it and it's only on those two evenings, I don't mind it at all. (Though I do wish they were trying to attract a demographic that liked better music.)

But I don't like the more startling sounds -- fireworks (and less often here, gunshots), people yelling in anger, backfires.

Oh this is HUGE. The number of people who move next door to 4 a.m. bars and then get mad that they moved next to a 4 a.m. bar!! You knew it was there!! It was there first!! (Ditto people who lose their minds about flight paths honestly. this has been a big thing in my neighborhood and 95% of the time it's from folks who moved here AFTER they changed the flight path to go over us. You knew this when you moved in! You could have picked any other neighborhood.)

That's like the people who move to a touristy place because they liked it so much when they had visited, and then complain about the tourists, the traffic, all the people, the noise...
posted by Dip Flash at 3:57 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

1. I used to really hate cars with loud sound systems until I started walking around with my 5yo. Every time somebody pulls up to an intersection with their windows rattling he just starts to dance. Like, bounce around off the charts enthusiastic dance. I have seen some of the best smiles in the universe dawning across the faces of these beefy car dudes. I'm coming around.

2. I always enjoyed hearing loud parties next door until I had kids, and every moment of sleep became unbelievably precious. When the exhausted neighbor shows up on your doorstep in their bathrobe, exercise a little empathy.

also please don't call in noise complaints, especially if you haven't talked to them face to face

also also, if you are my neighbor's teenage sons: why the fuck are you blasting New Order and Depeche Mode at your parties, that shit was old when the earth was young, have your not heard of the 21st century
posted by phooky at 4:37 PM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't like the drag racing that happens on the street where I live. It's dangerous and startling and loud. But at least the loudness warns people they're coming!
posted by aniola at 4:49 PM on September 6, 2022

If we got rid of most industrial and transportation sensory pollution, maybe not as many people would care so much about the sounds of humans having a good time?
posted by aniola at 5:08 PM on September 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

The apartment we were in before our current residence was on the corner of a fairly heavily used intersection, our deck looked out directly at it and the constant noise of traffic only abated after midnight. I've always had a fairly easy time filtering out distracting noise, or so I thought. Our current place is multiple orders of magnitude quieter. Right now all I can hear is a dog somewhere off in the distance, and the birds at the feeder outside. It was remarkable how much stress I noticed falling off as a result of the change, it truly surprised me.

Our upstairs neighbor does have a little one who sometimes jumps around a bit which can be jarring. They apologized in advance when we were moving in, but I have a hard time getting worked up over kids being kids and told them so. The fact that they brought it up tells me they're thoughtful about it, and raising kids is hard enough without me adding to their stress.
posted by calamari kid at 7:28 PM on September 6, 2022

That second article is so blatantly biased and data-free. Why should quiet and peace be reserved for people who can pay for it? Poor people need to sleep too. That right now the fundamental human need to not suffer hearing damage, let alone have a semi-peaceful home, is reserved for people who can pay for it is a problem. Noise is not a universal good.

As for the first article...humans are animals too. Our brightly-lit, constantly noisy urban environment isn't good for us either.
posted by Ahniya at 8:07 PM on September 6, 2022 [14 favorites]

It doesn't matter to me whether someone is joyfully revving their motorcycle or angrily revving their motorcycle. Decibels are decibels, and the damage to my eardrums and psyche are the same.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 9:18 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

In a figurative vacuum, I'd agree with you. But we don't live in that vacuum.

There are other sources of sound that we can all agree should go away, and that's a much better place to start.
posted by aniola at 10:03 PM on September 6, 2022

I have always maintained that every neighbour gets to have at least 2 loud parties every year - to at least 1am. Loud parties are part of the joy of the human condition - you should invite your neighbours, and tolerate their fun, fireworks included.

Mind you if they do it every night or even every week you're allowed to complain.

Meanwhile noise has become the bane of my life .... 6 weeks ago the tinnitus kicked in ... seemingly from no-where (I haven't been going to those loud parties)
posted by mbo at 10:55 PM on September 6, 2022

From the article linked in the comments ("New Neighbors and the Over-Policing of Communities of Color") -

Finding 1:
The highest quality-of-life complaint rates occurred in lower-income communities of color with the largest influxes of white residents.

[...]

Finding 2:
311 complaints for quality-of-life issues were significantly more likely to end in a summons or arrest in lower-income communities of color that experienced the largest influxes of white residents.

[...]

Finding 3:
The largest increases in NYPD-referred complaints occurred in communities of color with large influxes of white residents accompanied by new housing development. But within these areas, the complaint rate increased significantly faster where new, city-financed affordable housing development was also present.

My partner and I were out for a bike ride and we started talking about this comment. I said I thought it was ok that drivers were stopping for bicyclists; they do it for pedestrians. He pointed out that drivers stopping for bicyclists when there's no law for it can put the people on bikes in danger. The conversation went on for a bit. We concluded: when there is a difference in power, the people in a position of more power have a responsibility to not make things worse for the people in a position of less power while they're trying to make things better.


From the first article (and yes, humans are animals, too)-

We could regulate industries causing sensory pollution, but there’s not enough societal will. “Plastic pollution in the sea looks hideous and everyone is worried, but noise pollution in the sea is something we don’t experience so directly, so no one’s up in arms about it,” Lamont says.

[...]

Through patient observation, through the technologies at our disposal, through the scientific method, and, above all else, through our curiosity and imagination, we can try to step into perspectives outside our own. This is a profound gift, which comes with a heavy responsibility. As the only species that can come close to understanding other Umwelten, but also the species most responsible for destroying those sensory realms, it falls on us to marshal all of our empathy and ingenuity to protect other creatures, and their unique ways of experiencing our shared world.

posted by aniola at 11:21 PM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I worked night shift for a good while. There only noise I minded was the neighbour who decided to have half their house reconstructed over the course of a year (and counting!) without so much as a mention to anyone. We're talking several generators, diggers, jackhammers, heavy industrial vehicles rolling down our tiny back street absolutely not designed for it, 8 hours a day for over a year. In exactly the hours I needed to sleep in.

And you know what? I managed. It wasn't ideal, like, but you get used to it, event without earplugs or anything like that.

When I was young,a friend of mine used to live right under the approach to Kai Tak, the old Hong Kong airport. And I mean you could stand on the roof and wave to people in the planes and have them wave back, they came by low, proper jumbos as well. There was no real mitigation at all, single glazing even. I was woken early the first time I stayed with him, but pretty quickly got used to it. We'd sleep right through hours of window-shaking jet noise.


On a completely unrelated note:
1. I used to really hate cars with loud sound systems until I started walking around with my 5yo. Every time somebody pulls up to an intersection with their windows rattling he just starts to dance. Like, bounce around off the charts enthusiastic dance. I have seen some of the best smiles in the universe dawning across the faces of these beefy car dudes. I'm coming around.

This comment made my (otherwise miserably early) morning!
posted by Dysk at 11:48 PM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Noise above 55dB or so has a real negative impact on human health, from stress and hearing issues. The EU handbook on external costs of transport uses values of around 1000 euro per person per year as monetisation of impact of 70dB transport noise on someone living next to a noisy road, the ones you'd think were acclimated to it. And the quickest ways to reduce it are infrastructure investments... good luck in the US, I guess.

In Poland fireworks are most popular at New Year's, but many cities have been switching to noise free laser displays because of the impact on wildlife and domestic animals, but they're not as ingrained in the culture.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:56 AM on September 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's an average noise exposure above 55dB that's linked to negative health impacts, not noise above 55dB - if that were the case, anyone trying to have a conversation with you would be harmful to your health (as an introvert, this may feel true, but I don't think it is!) And specifically, the health impacts are linked to a night-time exposure above 50dB (or 40dB, depending on the study) with 55dB being an interim EU target because 40dB was deemed unrealistic. (It should be noted that this is due to its impact on sleep quality, and so the day/night bit is irrelevant or reversed depending on your working or life schedule!) You could be exposed to more than 55dB on average across your waking hours, if you sleep in less than 40dB, you're not necessarily getting the same health impacts - I could find studies about Lden (averaged across day, evening, night) and stuff about Lnight (averaged across night) and none on the impacts of chronic low-level noise exposure in the day alone. 55dB or even higher may be a fine average for the day (or whenever you're not sleeping) and the 55dB figure is partly derived from averaging across day and night?
posted by Dysk at 4:07 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

And you know what? I managed. It wasn't ideal, like, but you get used to it, event without earplugs or anything like that.

Wouldn't you have preferred NOT to have had to just manage, though? You mention that your neighbor didn't tell anyone about the disruption beforehand - wouldn't you have at least appreciated that heads-up?

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that everyone in the world go about their business in sepulchral silence at all times or anything - some noise is indeed unavoidable. But in the interest of getting along with neighbors, wouldn't some kind of "Hey, my apologies in advance but this is going to be a thing" notice that at least acknowledges the situation (and possibly give people a chance to figure something out) have been nice?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:26 AM on September 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Yes, I am absolutely in favour of not being an egregious dick, and trying to be considerate of your neighbours.

But the noise level wouldn't have been any lower for having been told. It would have generated less ill will, but no less noise.
posted by Dysk at 4:42 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

My neighbors two doors down had a loud backyard party on Saturday evening. I think they might have had a DJ, or at least someone had a microphone connected to the speakers. I heard Bell Biv Devoe coming through my deck doors at one point.

Anyway, it was quite loud, and it would have been polite for them to have notified us they were going to be doing so.

But it was a Saturday night on a holiday weekend. They stopped the music a little past 10, so it ended up being fine.

A black family lives there and have been otherwise pleasant enough neighbors who wave hello. They didn't need the police showing up to harass them. I chose to interpret the noise as happy sounds of humans having a celebration, even if I had to turn up my own TV a little to hear it over the noise.
posted by Fleebnork at 4:42 AM on September 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

We live in predominantly white suburbia in upstate NY. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers and barking dogs lead the pack in noise. There is a town ordinance about unattended barking dogs but I haven't complained. There are also collars that one can buy to curtail this. The barking dogs do not bark all night long. This is good. The lawn mower of our next door neighbor goes until the last leaf is vacuumed up. We live on a dead end street. A workman once said that it was the busiest dead end street he had ever see. When we first moved into this house a car going down the street was a big deal. At least it's quiet at night to sleep.
posted by DJZouke at 5:34 AM on September 7, 2022

One of the things I think about city noise - especially in the context of the notion that people create their own noise to make space in a noisy environment - is that while this is the case in most USAmerican cities that I've been to, it hasn't been the case in many many cities in other countries that I've travelled to.

This might have something to do with whether or not a city's transportation system relies on storing and using a large, internal-combustion-engine-having personal vehicle a few feet from bedroom windows.

Cities can be bustling and reasonably quit, by which I mean noisy on a human scale. Personally, I love hearing my neighbors, the stomps of children, the snippets of conversation going by my window, moments of other people's music.

I love life conducted in public. I hate that it's drowned out by car engines and horns.
posted by entropone at 6:01 AM on September 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Cities can be bustling and reasonably quit, by which I mean noisy on a human scale

"Cities aren't loud, cars are loud" previously on Metafilter
posted by tigrrrlily at 6:16 AM on September 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

I'm a white guy who moved into a city neighborhood and complained about the noise.

More specifically, I'm a gay white guy who moved into a nice quiet neighborhood and was targeted with harrassment. My neighbor across the street tried to use his unmuffled 1980s Dodge pickup truck to drive me out of my home. That thing could reach 80 decibels as measured from inside my house, and he'd run it for half an hour at a time, multiple times a day. When I went over to talk to him about it, he tried to assault me.

So I started going outside and taking video, every time. Which means I eventually had some good footage of him yelling at me that he was trying to drive me out of the neighborhood for being gay. At which point all I had to do was send a letter threatening him with a restraining order, and he stopped.

For about a year and a half, then started up again. After one more letter and an epic argument with a random relative the family realized that the guy doing the harassment was having major mental issues. They took him away somewhere, spent a couple of months cleaning all the junk out from inside the house because as it turns out he was hoarding, and turned the place into an AirBnB.

So I contributed to the genrtification of the neighborhood, as well.

Sometimes noise is a weapon, and you have to defend yourself.
posted by MrVisible at 7:14 AM on September 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

within these areas, the complaint rate increased significantly faster where new, city-financed affordable housing development was also present.

What this suggests (in addition to the obvious "NYPD is racist as hell") is that low- to moderate-income families which have cobbled together the cultural capital to navigate the affordable-housing lottery process are particularly invested in maintaining the livability of their nice new homes.
posted by praemunire at 7:21 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

We're in what was initially a working-class neighbourhood of small semi- and detached houses on small lots. Given the current premium on city houses, the area is now attracting more upscale owners (and flippers and speculators) and there are always one or two or more houses being renovated, or demolished for the construction of skinny McMansions. (and -gulp- we put a second storey up in 2005.)

So for us, the sound of gentrification is very frequent construction noise during the day. Trucks and heavy equipment, the beep-beep-beep of backups, pneumatic nailers, jackhammers, cement mixers, etc. This morning, we were gently awakened at 7:30 AM by the steady roar of a hydrovac truck a few doors up.

But our area is for the most part blissfully quiet outside of working hours.

And yes, ban all leaf-blowers! What an unnecessary sonic blight.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:59 AM on September 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

What this suggests (in addition to the obvious "NYPD is racist as hell") is that low- to moderate-income families which have cobbled together the cultural capital to navigate the affordable-housing lottery process are particularly invested in maintaining the livability of their nice new homes.

The article goes on to say:

Regardless of the relative importance of these different factors, the upshot for the city remains the same. City-financed affordable housing is intended, in part, to help long-time residents of marginalized communities stay in the communities they call home. But if staying in these communities means facing a changing cultural landscape that doesn’t resemble the old one and increasingly places long-time residents at risk of heightened police engagement, then city housing policy has failed them.

The city must be wary of building affordable housing that attracts a new mix of residents prone to more neighbor-on-neighbor complaints without addressing how police should respond to these non-urgent, quality-of-life conflicts. The non-urgent nature of the original complaint belies a far more urgent crisis of residential displacement and over-policing low-income communities of color.

posted by aniola at 8:27 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

So for us, the sound of gentrification is very frequent construction noise during the day.


I live in a neighborhood that, to my eye, seems weirdly gentrification-proof. It is more or less identical, in terms of socioeconomic level and demographics (working class, majority-minority), to what it was when my parents lived here 45 years ago, and at no time over that span did it either decline precipitously or gentrify substantially.*

It's so quiet! Or anyway, the sonic landscape is so much more pleasing. I moved here from a leafy, wealthy neighborhood dominated by homeowners and developers, where there was a constant clamor of: leaf blowers, lawn mowers, tree trimmers, construction and reno noise, an endless cascade of Amazon delivery trucks and vans idling, beeping. Someone was always demolishing an affordable 3-flat to make a nice big second yard for their 6-bedroom single family home, or adding a roof deck to their garage, or whatever.

Right now all I can hear is an occasional bus from the nearby major artery street, and the odd plane (the less-wealthy neighborhood is, unsurprisingly, a little more directly under a flight path). There are literally leaves rustling in the breeze outside my window and I can hear them! Sometimes a kid runs by or the postal worker is talking on her phone. At night there will be the music from the restaurant patio on the corner and sometimes a group of young dudes in the front yard next door, playing norteño music and having beers.

Part of this is that as a long-time WFH-er, and a night owl with no kids, the daytime noise is what I find myself most bothered by. I'm up til 2 am anyway; I don't care if your patio plays music til 10. But it is absolutely also the case that for me, life-noise is better than machine-noise, and leisure noise is more pleasant than the noise of work--especially the kind of work that is just, to me, rich folk making their rich folk houses worth more.

*I fretted about moving here as a middle class white lady gentrifier but 1) this is the only neighborhood I can afford to live in where I wouldn't need to drive, which I can't, and 2) my parents were the white folks who moved in 45 years ago and they don't seem to have ruined it, so maybe I won't either.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:07 AM on September 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

when there is a difference in power, the people in a position of more power have a responsibility to not make things worse for the people in a position of less power while they're trying to make things better.

In a perfect world, yes. (Remember noblesse oblige?) Unfortunately, "the people in a position of more power" seldom acknowledge that responsibility any more.

A black family lives there and have been otherwise pleasant enough neighbors who wave hello. They didn't need the police showing up to harass them.

True -‌- but I have no qualms about siccing the police on partying frat-boys.
posted by Rash at 9:35 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

But if staying in these communities means facing a changing cultural landscape that doesn’t resemble the old one and increasingly places long-time residents at risk of heightened police engagement, then city housing policy has failed them.

I don't see how that's responsive to what I said. It's a generalized criticism of city development policy. If you've gotten a spot via CB preference, you are already a nearby resident, and you've qualified for the apartment via income, so these are people of low to moderate income from the neighborhood driving the fastest increase in noise complaints.
posted by praemunire at 10:37 AM on September 7, 2022

metafilter: people who move into neighborhoods and demand that their own weird customs be treated as law /s/
posted by djseafood at 11:39 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

In the "New Neighbors and the Over-Policing of Communities of Color: An Analysis of NYPD-Referred 311 Complaints in New York City" study linked above could it also be possible that, rather than evidence of sharply conflicting cultural conceptions of noise and public space, non-white residents of lower-income neighborhoods made fewer 311 calls because, however they might feel about noise in their community, they knew that (1) cops don't care about their complaints and likely wouldn't bother helping; and (2) if the cops do show up, as per the study itself, it's likely to end in a summons or arrest, which they're reluctant to inflict on their neighbors even if said neighbors are bothering them with noise. On the other hand newer, wealthier white residents are more used to having police take their complaints seriously, and either don't understand or don't care that a complaint can carry very serious consequences for their new non-white neighbors.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:55 AM on September 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Frank Grimes: "I live in a single room above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley."
posted by neuron at 12:18 PM on September 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

The bit in the second article about the quiet on college campuses and how alienating it was to the author as a student of color really hit my white self hard. I felt very seen from outside and not in a good way.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 3:08 PM on September 7, 2022

I think that's very likely, star gentle uterus.
posted by praemunire at 5:04 PM on September 7, 2022