tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/urban-noise-19619/articlesUrban noise – The Conversation2023-04-26T04:09:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039212023-04-26T04:09:33Z2023-04-26T04:09:33ZWanted: family-friendly apartments. But what do families want from apartments?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522514/original/file-20230424-18-hqb686.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C409%2C8054%2C5389&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The family-friendly apartment is an idea whose time has come. In the Liverpool CBD in Sydney, for example, half the apartments are occupied by families with children, our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07293682.2023.2197604">newly published study</a> found. This is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1709625">twice the average for metropolitan Sydney</a>. </p>
<p>The high proportion of families living in apartments in town centres like Liverpool is often overlooked when situated within suburbs dominated by detached, lower-density dwellings. </p>
<p>The proportion of families living in apartments challenges many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1709625">assumptions about high-rise living</a>. Apartments are often seen as “stepping stones” for singles and couples on their way to detached houses, or a convenient lifestyle option for downsizers and empty-nesters.</p>
<p>The families in our study prioritise large, centrally located apartments over detached car-dependent dwellings. However, we found there’s a lack of larger apartments designed to meet families’ needs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quality-of-life-in-high-density-apartments-varies-here-are-6-ways-to-improve-it-139220">Quality of life in high-density apartments varies. Here are 6 ways to improve it</a>
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<h2>Families see benefits in apartment living</h2>
<p>The families we interviewed reported many benefits to apartment living. They valued being close to work, schools and leisure facilities, with easy walking access to diverse shops and services. </p>
<p>These preferences reflect the marketed benefits of compact living. And our research shows a range of households, including families with children, recognise these benefits. This points to a more fundamental shift in housing demand. </p>
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<img alt="Families in a playground in front of high-rise apartments" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522523/original/file-20230424-26-7on2t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Families value the easy access to services and amenities that living in CBD apartments offers.</span>
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<p>Among our study participants, the birth of a new child did not lead to a detached car-dependent home. Instead, it triggered a search for a larger apartment in the town centre. </p>
<p>These trends are only partly about choice. Participants acknowledged that a detached home would be more spacious but it would also mean they faced the added costs of buying and running a second car. </p>
<p>On balance, participants felt the CBD was the “best place” to live. Their priority was finding suitable high-rise homes within walking distance of schools, shops, public transport and community services – including libraries, health centres and parks. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-need-nature-i-need-space-high-rise-families-rely-on-child-friendly-neighbourhoods-128618">'I need nature, I need space': high-rise families rely on child-friendly neighbourhoods</a>
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<h2>Supply fails to meet family needs</h2>
<p>However, when we compared Liverpool CBD families’ preferences with housing supply, we found an overproduction of one- and two-bedroom apartments. These account for most of the increase in apartment numbers over the past decade, as the table below shows.</p>
<iframe title="Size of occupied apartments in Liverpool CBD" aria-label="Table" id="datawrapper-chart-JYDrw" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/JYDrw/3/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="100%" height="420" data-external="1"></iframe>
<p>Despite half of all apartment occupiers having children, the proportion of family-sized apartments hasn’t increased. In recent years, it actually fell. </p>
<p>Just over 15% of the high-rise housing stock in the CBD comprised three bedrooms or more at the 2011 and 2016 censuses. By 2021, it had fallen below 14%.</p>
<p>Without planning controls, the supply of large, family-friendly apartments is unlikely to increase. Developers, juggling their own material and credit costs, will always seek to maximise the number of dwellings they can build on their lots. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.liverpool.nsw.gov.au/development/liverpools-planning-controls/liverpool-development-control-plan">Development Control Plan for Liverpool CBD</a> requires 10% of the stock to be three-bedroom apartments. This is on par with the rest of Sydney. An exception is the <a href="https://www.thehills.nsw.gov.au/News-and-Publications/More-family-friendly-apartments-now-in-the-mix-for-The-Hills">Hills Shire Council</a>, which has experimented with 20% in development corridors. Increased supply without design and quality controls can nonetheless exacerbate the tensions of raising a family in an apartment. </p>
<h2>Good design matters, as does building quality</h2>
<p>Real estate advertising for apartments emphasises skyline views, open-plan layouts and private balconies. But it is less glamorous aspects – insulation, space and storage – that can be crucial for families to live well in a high-rise home. </p>
<p>Good family-friendly design includes space for children to sleep, play and study, and adequate storage for prams and the belongings of larger households. <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-apartment-living-on-the-rise-how-do-families-and-their-noisy-children-fit-in-88244">Adequate soundproofing</a> is also needed to reduce tensions over children’s noise. </p>
<p>All these features are critical for higher-density dwellings to cater properly for this growing demographic.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-apartment-living-on-the-rise-how-do-families-and-their-noisy-children-fit-in-88244">With apartment living on the rise, how do families and their noisy children fit in?</a>
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<p>Construction quality is also important. A <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14036096.2022.2099460">recent analysis</a> of federal and New South Wales parliamentary inquiries reveals the impacts of public policies of deregulation, self-certification and performance-based construction. The effect has been to shield cost-cutting by developers and construction companies while transferring risks to consumers. </p>
<p>While state governments experiment with <a href="https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/david-chandler-on-restoring-confidence-in-nsw-apartment-buildings/">new modes of regulation</a>, consumers <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02673037.2021.1887458">bear the life-time impacts</a>, both financial and emotional, of cut-price construction. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/water-leaks-cracks-and-flawed-fire-safety-systems-sydneys-apartments-are-riddled-with-building-defects-169526">Water leaks, cracks and flawed fire safety systems: Sydney's apartments are riddled with building defects</a>
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<h2>High-rise homes: more than an investment</h2>
<p>Societies in which a shift to higher-density living is part of family life must strike a reasonable balance between quality, affordability and apartment size. Yet these goals seem to be at odds with the reconfiguration of housing in Australia as an investment vehicle. </p>
<p>The protection of owned homes from capital gains tax and lavish subsidies for property investors have led to gains in the value of housing assets <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X19873673">exceeding income earned from work</a>. This sets the scene for finance and construction industries to capitalise on investor-driven demand rather than diverse families’ needs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remaking-our-suburbs-1960s-apartment-blocks-a-subtle-and-greener-way-to-increase-housing-density-190908">Remaking our suburbs' 1960s apartment blocks: a subtle and greener way to increase housing density</a>
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<h2>Reforms on three fronts are needed</h2>
<p>Meeting demand for high-rise housing in town centres requires a triple-barrelled approach. Construction quality, planning control and reconfigured financial incentives are all needed to encourage family-friendly products. </p>
<p>There is little doubt high-rise needs a more central place at the national urban policy table. And, at a more local level, there are steps councils can take. These include introducing minimum requirements for three-bedroom apartments in development control plans and negotiating density bonuses for developers that deliver such apartments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Cook receives funding from the Global Challenges Program- University of Wollongong.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shanaka Herath has received funding from the Global Challenges Program - University of Wollongong, Landcom NSW, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), NSW Department of Family and Community Services and City of Sydney Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie-May Kerr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In parts of Sydney, families occupy half the apartments and many value their convenient location. Yet, despite a surge in development, most apartments are one or two bedrooms and not family-friendly.Nicole Cook, Lecturer, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of WollongongShanaka Herath, Senior Lecturer, School of Built Environment, University of Technology SydneySophie-May Kerr, Research Associate, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943832023-01-04T11:59:35Z2023-01-04T11:59:35ZNoise pollution: how the sounds of the city were redefined as ‘urban music’ in 1920s Japan<p>Cash machines, elevators and escalators that talk. Jingles in department stores, train stations, supermarkets and shopping arcades. Loud speaker warnings about the dangers of riding on the bus or train, overlayed by sirens, car horns, traffic and pedestrians. “For a culture that places a high value on quiet,” US journalist Daniel Krieger <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2014/10/10/lifestyle/making-noise-keeping-decibels/">once wrote</a>, “Japan can get pretty noisy sometimes.” </p>
<p>Japanese anti-noise campaigner Yoshimichi Nakajima talks about people being <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2014/10/10/lifestyle/making-noise-keeping-decibels/">“pickled in noise”</a>. He argues that at the core of his nation’s relationship with noise pollution lies passivity and ignorance. People in Japan pay no mind to the noise, he says – they barely notice it. </p>
<p>If <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-centuries-long-quest-for-a-quiet-place-94614">noise pollution</a> is a contemporary problem, however, quite how to measure, control and even define it has long been a subject of debate in Japan. My <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003143772-8/hell-modern-sound-martyn-david-smith">research shows</a> that this was particularly evident in debates over the language used to discuss the urban soundscape in the 1920s and 1930s.</p>
<h2>A changing soundscape</h2>
<p>From the 1860s, as the Japanese government imported technologies from the west to create a modern nation-state, life in Japanese cities was rapidly mechanised, shaped by transportation and industry. This process transformed the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9223413/">soundscape</a> – or aural environment – too. </p>
<p>In September 1902, one “Mr A Victim” wrote to the Japan Times to complain about the excessive amount of steamboat whistling and factory bells on and around the Sumida river in Tokyo. Noise caused by civil engineering projects increasingly impinged on everyday life, as city planners rethought the major cities, laying concrete foundations, building subways and dreaming up modern cityscapes.</p>
<p>On city streets, rickshaws, wagons drawn by horses and oxen, pull carts and pedestrians were increasingly competing with bicycles, trams, trains, cars and motorbikes. In Osaka – which, by the 1920s was the sixth largest metropolis in the world – the number of cars, trucks and motorbikes exploded from 39 in 1915 to 6,886 in 1935. </p>
<p>Media commentators were quick to denounce the resulting racket. The February 2 1929 edition of the Osaka Asahi newspaper described it as “a hell of modern sound” that had given birth to “the scream of civilisation sickness”. And the October 9 1931 edition of the Osaka Mainichi labelled the city’s noise “the barbarism of civilisation”.</p>
<p>Scholars took a more nuanced view. In journals such as Urban Problems, engineers, architects and acousticians discussed the pressing need for an agreed definition of urban noise if the problem was to be solved. </p>
<h2>Defining urban noise</h2>
<p>The Japanese writing system uses phonetic alphabets (hiragana and katakana) and Chinese characters (kanji). While different Chinese characters can often have the same pronunciation, their implication can differ significantly. For example, the kanji used for “sound waves” is 音響, pronounced <em>onkyou</em>; it is a compound made up of 音 (<em>on</em>, “sound”) and 響 (<em>kyou</em>, “echo or reverberation”). </p>
<p>In early 20th-century discussion of the noise problem in the mainstream media, the compounds 騒音 and 噪音, both pronounced <em>souon</em>, were used interchangeably to imply “noise”. </p>
<p>For scholars, however, the problem in coming to an agreed definition of urban noise was that those two compounds inferred slightly different things. For physicists, 噪音 designates complicated sound waves that rarely repeat and can change in volume and timing. It is thus used to distinguish unappealing, unwanted sound and aural interference from melodious sound waves that are relatively constant in volume and timing – from music, in other words, or in Japanese, 音楽, pronounced <em>ongaku</em>. </p>
<p>But as physicist Kohata Shigekazu pointed out in Urban Problems in September 1930, this usage effectively cast as undesirable “noise” many common auditory aspects of daily urban life and the natural world. By virtue of their diverse, constantly changing frequencies, all manner of organic, random sounds could be termed 噪音: those of the wind and the water, footsteps, or the sounds of people milling about. </p>
<p>In an attempt to solve this dilemma, architect Satou Takeo proposed in the same journal that the first <em>souon</em> kanji – 騒音 – be used to refer to any noise that had an unpleasant effect on daily life. His reasoning was that the first character of this compound – 騒, <em>sou</em> – implies “boisterous or turbulent”: taken as a whole, the compound literally means “turbulent sound”. Today 騒音 does indeed refer to noise which obstructs peace and quiet, interferes with the transmission of organised sound such as music or conversation, or damages hearing or health.</p>
<p>These scholarly debates continued, drawing in more and more experts. In 1933, architect Kinichi Hirose hoped to settle the matter by proposing <em>kensouon</em> (喧噪音), which added the symbol for “boisterous, noisy, brawling” (喧, <em>yakamashii</em>) to that first compound. Hirose’s point was that the problem of sound pollution was the sonic environment birthed by modern machinery: the discordant sounds of transport, civil engineering and construction techniques. This was “city noise” (都市喧噪音, <em>toshi kensouon</em>). </p>
<p>By contrast, those sounds that Hirose saw as integral to the aesthetic appeal of city life – footsteps, singing, radios blaring and tradespeople shouting in the street – should be understood as “city music” (都市音楽, <em>toshi ongaku</em>). </p>
<h2>A global debate</h2>
<p>Similar debates were underway across the newly industrialised world. Historian James G Mansell <a href="https://academic.oup.com/illinois-scholarship-online/book/23567">has shown</a> how in the UK, people in the early 20th century deemed theirs to be the “age of noise”. In this context, class-based prejudices came to inform the definition of urban noise. Itinerant buskers and pedlars were targeted. </p>
<p>In the US, as historian Raymond Smilor <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40641255?searchText=Raymond+Smilor&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DRaymond%2BSmilor&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A30ab7046e8032ef3b5e80ef58a47e820&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">recounts</a> in a 1977 article entitled Cacophony at 34th and 6th, people from across all social classes banded together in anti-noise campaigning because, as he put it, “noise was a problem that affected everyone intimately”. </p>
<p>People weren’t just advocating for quiet, Smilor wrote. They were grappling with the complexities and uncertainties of what he termed an entirely “new and bewildering society”. </p>
<p>This, in turn, led to <a href="http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/%7Emma/teaching/MS115/readings/thompson.pdf">a new economy</a>. As acousticians developed soundproofing, the modern science of acoustics was posited as being able to provide solutions to the noise problem. </p>
<p>Even if this proved ultimately futile – cities only got louder – a similar rush to eradicate noise by experts, scientists, conglomerates, merchants and the state itself can be traced in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. For some, though, cities were not cacophonous. They gave birth to music of a new kind: an urban symphony.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194383/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martyn Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the early decades of the 20th century, people grappled with the sounds modernity wrought. Some heard only noise. Others found great beauty.Martyn Smith, Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1934612022-11-10T19:00:39Z2022-11-10T19:00:39Z‘A kind of meditative peace’: quiet hour shopping makes us wonder why our cities have to be so noisy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493967/original/file-20221107-25-ebxjah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=371%2C1329%2C1970%2C1329&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea behind “quiet hour” shopping is to set aside a time each week for a retail experience that minimises noise and other sources of sensory overload. It is aimed at people who are <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/explainer-neurodivergence-mental-health/">neurodivergent</a> – an umbrella term for people with autism, ADHD and other sensory-processing conditions. </p>
<p>What began as a boutique or specialist retail strategy has become more mainstream. Major <a href="https://www.coles.com.au/about-coles/community/accessibility/quiet-hour">supermarket</a> <a href="https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/au/en/media/news-archive/2019/woolworths-rolls-out-quiet-hour-to-select-stores-across-australia.html">chains</a> and <a href="https://insideretail.com.au/news/westfield-tuggerah-introduces-quiet-hour-for-people-with-dementia-autism-201907">shopping centres</a> in Australia and overseas have introduced it in recent years.</p>
<p>In newly published <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07255136221133188">research</a> we explored quiet hour as an aspect of the impacts of sound on how people experience city life. As expected, we found it did benefit people who are neurodivergent. But other people also welcomed the relief from sensory overload once they’d overcome the feeling of having wandered into an eerily quiet “post-apocalyptic scene”. </p>
<p>Our work has made us question the acceptance of urban noise and light as being part and parcel of a vibrant city.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/contested-spaces-you-cant-stop-the-music-the-sounds-that-divide-shoppers-72644">Contested spaces: you can't stop the music – the sounds that divide shoppers</a>
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<h2>What does quiet hour involve?</h2>
<p>Quiet hour is intended to make retail spaces more inclusive or sensory-friendly. Its features include retailers or mall managers agreeing to: </p>
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<li><p>switch automatic doors to open</p></li>
<li><p>pause collection of trolleys</p></li>
<li><p>turn off the PA and music</p></li>
<li><p>fix flickering lights and turn off as much lighting as practicable</p></li>
<li><p>remove scented reeds and pause automatic scent dispensers</p></li>
<li><p>switch off hand dryers </p></li>
<li><p>turn down the volume on checkout scanners.</p></li>
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<p>One of the tools we used for mapping quiet hour was a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07255136221133188">thematic analysis</a> of reports about it in Australian print media from 2017 to 2019. We found the following themes: </p>
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<li><p>an emphasis on the kinds of discomforts associated with retail environments</p></li>
<li><p>the importance of providing a “low-sensory environment” as a form of inclusion</p></li>
<li><p>while lighting was often mentioned, the main recurring theme was the reduction of sound. </p></li>
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<h2>Why does reducing sound matter?</h2>
<p>Sound and sensory hypersensitivity are important themes in neurodivergent people’s accounts of how they struggle with everyday experiences others take for granted. </p>
<p>Leading autism researcher and advocate Sandra Thom-Jones <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/growing-in-to-autism-paperback-softback">writes</a> that neurodivergents’ sensitivity to sound is complex. It’s affected by “what the sound actually is, how loud it is, whether I am expecting it, and whether I can control it”.</p>
<p>People might assume everyone has the ability to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203033142-4/radio-texture-self-others1-jo-tacchi">frame which sounds are important</a> and which are “irrelevant to what we are listening to or doing”. However, the ability to single out sound sources and block out background noise is a major point of differentiation between neurotypicals and neurodivergents.</p>
<p>Thom-Jones, who received her autism diagnosis at age 52, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/growing-in-to-autism-paperback-softback">reports</a> that when she is “in an environment with multiple sounds” she tends to “hear all of them”.</p>
<p>Thus, when she is catching up with a friend in a café, she may be “listening intently” to what her friend is saying but she will also be “hearing the piped music, the people talking at the next table, cars driving past, the coffee machine”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/autistic-people-can-hear-more-than-most-which-can-be-a-strength-and-a-challenge-77039">Autistic people can hear more than most – which can be a strength and a challenge</a>
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<img alt="people sit at tables in a streetside cafe" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493750/original/file-20221107-23-xonvn9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Not everyone loves that bustling streetside cafe – piped music, people talking, passing cars and the coffee machine all at once is too much for some.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-sitting-beside-glass-wall-1833320/">Lisa Fotios/Pexels</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Others welcome quiet hour too</h2>
<p>Given how neurodivergents process sound, quiet hour is likely to increase their sense of comfort in retail spaces. </p>
<p>However, quiet hour also suspends or – to use a term coined by <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Frame_Analysis/XBpmAAAAIAAJ?hl=en">Erving Goffman</a> – “rekeys” the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/symb.506">sensory frames</a> of all shoppers. A quiet hour could benefit lots of people who may not have a specific condition but simply prefer a quieter retail environment.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wired-by-sound-the-long-term-impacts-of-constant-noise-11020">Wired by sound: the long-term impacts of constant noise</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We found this is an under-researched area, but did find anecdotal accounts to suggest this. Take the <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/12-07-2020/the-quiet-hours-in-praise-of-supermarket-serenity">case</a> of New Zealand actress and author Michelle Langstone. </p>
<p>She reports visiting stores across Auckland and Rotorua that offer quiet-hour shopping. She stumbled upon it by “sheer luck”. At first, she admits, it felt “a bit like a post-apocalyptic scene”.</p>
<p>Once she adjusted to the unfamiliar sensory environment, she felt herself succumbing to changed supermarket routines: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I cruised every single [aisle], taking in the quiet for nearly 45 minutes, at the end of which I felt a kind of meditative peace come over me.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Langstone also <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/12-07-2020/the-quiet-hours-in-praise-of-supermarket-serenity">reports</a> avoiding impulse buying. That first time she left with “only [the] bread and eggs” she had gone to the shop for. She was able to focus on shopping rather than “multi-tasking”, and quiet hour left her with a “feeling of goodwill towards all shoppers”. </p>
<p>In other words, even if the strategy is about levelling the sensory playing field for neurodivergents, it seems to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soin.12232">change the shopping experience</a> for other people too.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="stressed woman pushing a trolley in the supermarket" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493749/original/file-20221107-23-5fuj5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In contrast to the usual stress of supermarket shopping, quiet hour left one shopper with a ‘feeling of goodwill towards all shoppers’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why the bias towards the noisy city?</h2>
<p>As researchers interested in sound and space, quiet hour made us reflect on how we think about these issues and our attitudes to noise. It made us question, for example, why one of the most cited texts in our field is entitled <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/noise">Noise: The Political Economy of Music</a>? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/let-cities-speak-what-sounds-define-us-now-76507">Let cities speak: what sounds define us now?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Studies of silence or quietude are rare in urban or spatial studies. One has to turn to fields such as the study of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1466138109339041">meditation practices</a> or the silence associated with <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/A+History+of+Silence:+From+the+Renaissance+to+the+Present+Day-p-9781509517350">nature or sacred spaces</a> to find positive accounts of reduced noise.</p>
<p>This needs correcting. Sound intensity matters if cities, buildings or public spaces are to foster <em>hospitality</em> and “<a href="https://www.metrolab.brussels/publications/the-qualities-of-hospitality-and-the-concept-of-inclusive-city">support people in their activities by facilitating their stay</a>”. </p>
<p>What quiet hour teaches us is that an inclusive or welcoming city is a city that “<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Resonance%3A+A+Sociology+of+Our+Relationship+to+the+World-p-9781509519927">resonates</a>” with different kinds of minds, bodies and styles of sensory processing. </p>
<p>Quiet hour might therefore be both an inclusion strategy and an experiment that forces us to think more deeply about our cities and how they sound.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Quiet hour is a strategy aimed at making retail spaces more inclusive for people who struggle with sensory overload, but they’re not the only ones who welcome a pause in the assault on their senses.Eduardo de la Fuente, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Justice and Society, UniSA, University of South AustraliaMichael James Walsh, Associate Professor in Social Sciences, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1162572019-05-03T10:42:14Z2019-05-03T10:42:14ZDrones to deliver incessant buzzing noise, and packages<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271856/original/file-20190430-136807-izn2za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=156%2C131%2C5222%2C3544&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's going to get loud.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-man-closed-ears-119712346">Alexey Laputin/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A sister company of Google, Alphabet’s Wing Aviation, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/716360818/faa-certifies-googles-wing-drone-delivery-company-to-operate-as-an-airline">just got federal approval</a> to start using drones for commercial delivery. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Air/b">Amazon’s own drone-delivery program</a> is ready to launch as well. As drones take flight, the world is about to get a lot louder – as if neighborhoods were filled with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/hearing_loss/what_noises_cause_hearing_loss.html">leaf blowers</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-09/noise-from-drone-delivery-service-divides-canberra-residents/10484044">lawn mowers</a> and <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/365635/noisy-wing-drones-are-being-quietly-redesigned">chainsaws</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SK5wNauZz80?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Are you ready for this?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Small recreational drones are fairly loud. Serious commercial drones are much louder. They have eight or more propellers (<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/716360818/faa-certifies-googles-wing-drone-delivery-company-to-operate-as-an-airline">Alphabet’s Wing has 14</a>; <a href="https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/another-new-frontier-for-prime-air">Amazon’s Octocopter has eight</a> spinning at <a href="https://youtu.be/InjxuXm5CJg?start=513">thousands of revolutions per minute</a>, physically beating the air to generate lift and movement. The heavier the load, the harder they have to work, the more air gets beaten – and the louder the sound. </p>
<p>Drones also make higher pitched buzzing sounds than helicopters, which have much lower frequencies because their larger rotors don’t need to spin as fast to generate the necessary power. Now imagine tens or even hundreds of drones buzzing around your neighborhood, delivering packages to homes and businesses. Next, imagine the <a href="https://slate.com/business/2016/06/on-demand-delivery-by-companies-like-amazon-and-uber-could-produce-a-traffic-nightmare.html">round-the-clock hives of aerial</a> activity that warehouses and distribution centers will become, in addition to their <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/cities-seek-deliverance-from-the-e-commerce-boom/523671/">existing burden on local roads</a>; Amazon recently ordered <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-orders-20-000-mercedes-benz-vans-for-new-delivery-service-1536157804">20,000 new vans</a>.</p>
<p>As an <a href="http://acousticecologylab.org">acoustic ecologist</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KeNbtNgAAAAJ&hl=en">I</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/listening-to-nature-how-sound-can-help-us-understand-environmental-change-105794">monitor the sound of our environment</a> and how it changes. I am concerned that drones are taking to the air without a lot of thought for the ears of people on the ground. </p>
<p>Will there be a weight limit on delivery-drone payloads? Who will monitor the sound levels, and how? Should there be a curfew on hours of operation? There must be a reason companies don’t include the sound of the drone in advertising materials – and it’s probably not because they sound so nice.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MXo_d6tNWuY?wmode=transparent&start=51" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In this ad, the drone seems silent.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Health and well-being</h2>
<p>Urban designers are often concerned about sound levels in neighborhoods. Wealthier suburbs, for instance, are always <a href="https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2003-40308">farther from big noise sources</a> like airports and highways. Existing noise-control laws are basically useless at <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/air_noise_pollution_socioeconomic_status_links_IR13_en.pdf">protecting people’s well-being</a>, general health <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/11/city-noise-mental-health-traffic-study/417276/">or mental health</a>. Some wealthy neighborhoods even consider planting trees not just for the added greenery but because the <a href="https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/urban-regeneration-and-greenspace-partnership/greenspace-in-practice/benefits-of-greenspace/noise-abatement/">soft foliage absorbs sound</a>, making these communities even quieter and more peaceful.</p>
<p>Incessant mechanical buzzing doesn’t fit with anyone’s idea of a pleasant community. That’s what drones will bring, though. Even domestic drones can raise baseline sound pressure levels by <a href="https://youtu.be/V5DYre_EZKU?start=252">at least 20 decibels</a>; when each 6dB increase means <a href="http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm">loudness doubles</a>, that means a single drone can make an area 8 to 12 times louder than it is now.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V5DYre_EZKU?wmode=transparent&start=283" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Drones turn a quiet day into something quite different.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not just loudness. Drones have relatively small propellers, which don’t move much air, but they move it very rapidly. The amount of energy put into moving the air equates to its volume or loudness. The speed of the spinning equates to its pitch, or frequency. Refinements to propeller shapes can <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16573820/dji-mavic-pro-platinum-drone-sound-noise">change the pitch</a>, but companies will only research noise reduction if their customers demand it.</p>
<p>Adding a payload to a drone means the propellers must put more energy into the air by spinning faster – making a louder and higher-pitched sound. The frequencies they generate are, in fact, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves">the very frequencies people are most sensitive to</a>. Turning, or even fighting gusts of wind to stay on course, also requires more propeller energy at higher speeds. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2017-4051">NASA study</a> found that people find the specific sounds drones make to be particularly annoying.</p>
<p><iframe id="SzpE2" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SzpE2/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The amount of time a person is exposed to different sound levels matters, too. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration says workers exposed to <a href="https://www.osha.gov/Publications/laboratory/OSHAfactsheet-laboratory-safety-noise.pdf">85 decibels or louder for eight hours or more</a> may suffer hearing damage or loss. The Federal Aviation Administration says that residential areas should not have <a href="https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/noise/history/">aircraft noise averaging above 65dB</a> in a 24-hour period.</p>
<h2>Ecological effects</h2>
<p>Without forethought, public outcry and regulation, the buzzing of drones may soon fill city and suburban skies – adding to the din in many places, and disturbing the peace of even those wealthy suburbs whose residents can afford the <a href="https://youtu.be/prhDrfUgpB0?t=130">convenience of rapid home delivery</a>. Even neighborhoods that have managed to avoid being under <a href="https://apnews.com/2c040a68d76a4ab5b7420c0681a860e8">airport flight paths</a> will find themselves <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/5995059/a-noisy-nuisance-drones-slammed-in-submissions-to-new-inquiry/">surrounded by the buzz</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C5abCs5VHsE?wmode=transparent&start=119" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Coming to a community near you?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Public parks, designed to provide places for recreation, community gatherings and quiet contemplation, may no longer provide any escape from <a href="https://youtu.be/prhDrfUgpB0?start=204">the hum of daily life</a>.</p>
<p>Don’t forget about the birds, either. You might not be able to enjoy birdsong in the <a href="https://soundcloud.com/garthpaine/organ-pipe-soundscape">morning with your coffee</a>, but even worse, the <a href="https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2012/06/bird-calls-drowned-out-by-city-noise/">birds themselves might not be able to hear each other</a>, either. <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3057041/city-birds-are-changing-their-songs-because-of-urban-noise">Bird calls are key to species’ survival</a>, letting them warn each other of danger – and find mates. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271854/original/file-20190430-136807-we2iza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Birds may feel like doing this to delivery drones – whether they’re trained birds or not.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/golden-eagle-aquila-chrysaetos-flying-white-728931613">Martin Mecnarowski/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Any home delivery service raises a great many questions about <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-consumption-production/">sustainability and the costs of consumption</a> in energy, material and human lives. Until now, though, those deliveries have been by car and truck over existing roads and are covered <a href="https://www.semasan.com/resources/exhaust-noise-laws-state">by ordinances on sound levels</a>. Adding drones will bring a third dimension to shipping – but also to the level of noise in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garth Paine receives funding from ASU Herberger Institute for the Arts, the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy and from private foundations not related to the content of this article. </span></em></p>Commercial and recreational drones are taking to the air. They’re very noisy, and neighborhoods everywhere could become awfully loud.Garth Paine, Associate Professor of Digital Sound and Interactive Media, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/946142018-04-19T10:51:07Z2018-04-19T10:51:07ZOur centuries-long quest for ‘a quiet place’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215454/original/file-20180418-163962-ryo3bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lithograph by French caricaturist J. J. Grandville depicts the torture of too much noise.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53006255b.r=carivari%20%20Grandville?rk=21459;2">Bibliothèque nationale de France</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2018 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6644200/">A Quiet Place</a>” is an edge-of-your-seat tale about a family struggling to avoid being heard by monsters with hypersensitive ears. Conditioned by fear, they know the slightest noise will provoke a violent response – and almost certain death. </p>
<p>Audiences came out in droves to dip their toes into its quiet terror, and loved it: It raked in over $100 million at the box office and got <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_quiet_place_2018/">a 95 percent rating</a> on Rotten Tomatoes. </p>
<p>Like fairy tales and fables that dramatize cultural phobias or anxieties, the movie may be resonating with audiences because something about it rings true. For hundreds of years, Western culture has been at war with noise.</p>
<p>Yet the history of this quest for quietness, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10020446/Becoming_Quiet_On_Mediation_Noise_Cancellation_and_Commodity_Quietness">which I’ve explored</a> by digging through archives, reveals something of a paradox: The more time and money people spend trying to keep unwanted sound out, the more sensitive to it they become.</p>
<h2>Be quiet – I’m thinking!</h2>
<p>As long as people have lived in close quarters, <a href="https://mikegoldsmith.weebly.com/history-of-noise.html">they’ve been complaining</a> about the noises other people make and yearning for quiet. </p>
<p>In the 1660s, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm">speculated</a>, “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Pascal surely knew it was harder than it sounds. </p>
<p>But in modern times, the problem seems to have gotten exponentially worse. During the Industrial Revolution, people swarmed to cities roaring with factory furnaces and shrieking with train whistles. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called the cacophony “torture for intellectual people,” arguing that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/im-thinking-please-be-quiet.html">thinkers needed quietness</a> in order <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapter8.html">to do good work</a>. Only stupid people, he thought, could tolerate noise. </p>
<p>Charles Dickens described feeling “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=f0RYAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA355&ots=0PZKCJznop&dq=harassed%2C%20worried%2C%20wearied%2C%20driven%20nearly%20mad%2C%20by%20street%20musicians&pg=PA355#v=onepage&q=harassed,%20worried,%20wearied,%20driven%20nearly%20mad,%20by%20street%20musicians&f=false">harassed, worried, wearied, driven nearly mad, by street musicians</a>” in London. In 1856, The Times <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3828975?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">echoed his annoyance</a> with the “noisy, dizzy, scatterbrain atmosphere” and called on Parliament to legislate “a little quiet.”</p>
<p>It seems the more people started to complain about noise, the more sensitive to it they became. Take the Scottish polemicist Thomas Carlyle. In 1831, he moved to London. </p>
<p>“I have been more annoyed with noises,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=FipFAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA44&ots=DFrsWjMZtY&dq=carlyle%20which%20get%20free%20access%20through%20my%20open%20windows&pg=PA44#v=onepage&q=carlyle%20which%20get%20free%20access%20through%20my%20open%20windows&f=false">he wrote</a>, “which get free access through my open windows.” </p>
<p>He became so triggered by noisy peddlers that he spent a fortune soundproofing the study in his Chelsea Row house. It didn’t work. His hypersensitive ears perceived the slightest sound as torture, and he was forced to retreat to the countryside. </p>
<h2>The war on noise</h2>
<p>By the 20th century, governments all over the world were engaged in an endless war on noisy people and things. After successfully silencing the tug boats whose tooting tormented her on the porch of her Riverside Avenue mansion, Mrs. Julia Barnett Rice, the wife of venture capitalist Isaac Rice, founded the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise in New York in order to combat what <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7qY2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA569#v=onepage&q&f=false">she called</a> “one of the greatest banes of city life.” </p>
<p>Counting as members over 40 governors, and with Mark Twain as their spokesman, the group used its political clout to get “quiet zones” established around hospitals and schools. Violating a quiet zone <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/city-noise-might-be-making-you-sick/553385/">was punishable by fine</a>, imprisonment or both. </p>
<p>But focusing on noise only made her more sensitive to it. Like Carlyle, Rice turned to architects and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-society-for-the-suppression-of-unnecessary-noise">built a quiet place deep under the ground</a>, where her husband, Isaac, <a href="http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/rice.html">could work out his chess gambits</a> in peace.</p>
<p>Inspired by Rice, anti-noise organizations sprang up around the globe.
After World War I, with ears across Europe still ringing from explosions, the transnational culture war against noise really took off.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215451/original/file-20180418-134691-1x5l36s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A promotion for the British Anti-Noise League, which was active in the 1930s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://russelldavies.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c6b5453ef01b7c8c50158970b-pi">Russell Davies</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cities all over the world targeted noisy technologies, like <a href="http://www.innovateus.net/innopedia/what-kind-device-klaxon">the Klaxon automobile horn</a>, which Paris, London and Chicago banned by ordinance in the 1920s. In the 1930s, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia launched a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/11/archives/noiseless-nights-decreed-here-by-la-guardia-during-october-auto.html">“noiseless nights” campaign</a> aided by sensitive noise-measuring devices stationed throughout the city. New York passed <a href="https://nyti.ms/2IXwaXQ">dozens of laws over the next several decades</a> to muzzle the worst offenders, and cities throughout the world followed suit. By the 1970s, governments were treating noise as environmental pollution to be regulated like any industrial byproduct.</p>
<p>Planes were forced to fly higher and slower around populated areas, while factories were required to mitigate the noise they produced. In New York, the Department of Environmental Protection – <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/13/nyregion/nyc-noise-timeline.html#/#time228_7187">aided by a van filled with sound-measuring devices and the words “noise makes you nervous & nasty” on the side</a> – went after noisemakers as part of “Operation Soundtrap.” </p>
<p>After Mayor Michael Bloomberg <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/nyregion/30noise.html">instituted new noise codes</a> in 2007 to ensure “well-deserved peace and quiet,” the city installed hypersensitive listening devices to monitor the soundscape and citizens were encouraged to call 311 to report violations. </p>
<h2>Consuming quietness</h2>
<p>Yet legislating against noisemakers rarely satisfied our growing desire for quietness, so products and technologies emerged to meet the demand of increasingly sensitive consumers. In the early 20th century, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZSoDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=quiet+quilt+popular+science&source=bl&ots=Dfr8c8HeSB&sig=R4dadRZY1WJuVPDt-3cShT70lfw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_7ZDn88PaAhUvVd8KHVT5BpwQ6AEIODAC#v=onepage&q=quiet%20quilt%20popular%20science&f=false">sound-muffling curtains</a>, softer floor materials, room dividers and ventilators kept the noise from the outside from coming in, while preventing sounds from bothering neighbors or the police.</p>
<p>But as Carlyle, Rice and the family in “A Quiet Place” found out, creating a sound-free lifeworld is nearly impossible. Certainly, as Hugo Gernsback learned with his 1925 invention <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2015/12/22/the-isolator-an-invention-from-1925-designed-to-improve-work-productivity/">the Isolator</a> – a lead helmet with viewing holes connected to a breathing apparatus – it was impractical. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215452/original/file-20180418-163986-145410d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of Hugo Gernsback’s ‘Isolator’ appeared in a 1925 issue of the magazine ‘Science and Invention.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.strangerdimensions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/the-isolator.jpg">Science and Invention</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No matter how thoughtful the design, unwanted sound continued to be a part of everyday life. </p>
<p>Unable to suppress noise, disquieted consumers started trying to mask it with wanted sound, buying gadgets like the Sleepmate <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/the-magical-machine-thatll-help-you-sleep-better-than-ambien">white noise machine</a> or by playing <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-man-who-recorded-tamed-and-then-sold-nature-sounds-to-america">recorded sounds</a> of nature, from breaking waves to rustling forests, on their stereos.</p>
<p>Today, the quietness industry is a booming international market. There are hundreds of digital apps and technologies created by psychoacoustic engineers for consumers, including <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnnyjet/2017/12/11/best-noise-cancelling-headphones-for-traveling/#4607bcee2e68">noise cancellation products</a> with adaptive algorithms that detect outside sounds and produce anti-phase sonic waves, rendering them inaudible. </p>
<p>Headphones like Beats by Dr. Dre <a href="https://youtu.be/oWithLP0VlQ">promise</a> a life “Above the Noise”; Cadillac’s “Quiet Cabin” <a href="https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Bkf/2014-cadillac-cts-quiet-cabin">claims</a> it can protect people from “the silent horror film out there.” </p>
<p>The marketing efforts for these products aim to convince us that noise is intolerable and the only way to be happy is to shut out other people and their unwanted sounds. This same fantasy is mirrored in “A Quiet Place”: The only moment of relief in the whole “silent horror film” is when Evelyn and Lee are wired in together, swaying gently to their own music and silencing the world outside their earbuds. </p>
<p>In a Sony ad for their noise canceling headphones, the company depicts a world in which the consumer exists in a sonic bubble in an eerily empty cityscape.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215050/original/file-20180416-570-1xrirgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2011 ad for Sony’s noise cancellation headphones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/sony_harley_shadows">Ads of the World</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Content as some may feel in their ready-made acoustic cocoons, the more people accustom themselves to life without unwanted sounds from others, the more they become like the family in “A Quiet Place.” To hypersensitized ears, the world becomes noisy and hostile.</p>
<p>Maybe more than any alien species, it’s this intolerant quietism that’s the real monster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Jordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is noise the real monster? Or is it our own intolerance of unwanted sounds?Matthew Jordan, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882442018-01-08T19:35:16Z2018-01-08T19:35:16ZWith apartment living on the rise, how do families and their noisy children fit in?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201091/original/file-20180108-195558-1uvj7ae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children being children can be loud, which creates challenges when they live in an apartment.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/full-length-of-boy-sitting-on-floor-315265/">Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A growing number of Australians live in apartments. The compact city model presents many benefits, but living close to each other also presents challenges.</p>
<p>Rapid growth in apartment developments in recent decades has led to a <a href="https://www.ocn.org.au/book/export/html/1200">rise in noise-related complaints and disputes across urban Australia</a>. Households with children are on the front line of such tensions. They are one of the fastest-growing demographics living in apartments. Analysis of the latest census data shows, for instance, that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755458617301093">families with children under the age of 15 comprise 25% of Sydney’s apartment population</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/contested-spaces-living-next-door-to-alice-and-anh-and-abdullah-74172">Contested spaces: living next door to Alice (and Anh and Abdullah)</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Apartment design and cultural acceptance of families in the vertical city have not kept pace with this shift in housing forms. Cultural expectations that families with children ought to live in detached houses are persistent. Apartment planners and developers reproduce these expectations by <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8470.2004.00278.x/epdf">neglecting children in building design and marketing</a>. </p>
<p>With children’s sounds being difficult to predict or control, changing apartment demographics are an issue for planners and residents alike. </p>
<h2>Trying to be good parents and good neighbours</h2>
<p>My research explores the everyday experiences of families living in apartments in Sydney. It reveals that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755458617301093">parents trying to make apartment life work face an emotional juggling act</a>.</p>
<p>Apartment living often creates an emotional dilemma between being a good parent and being a good neighbour. Parents want to allow children to be children, but are ever anxious about annoying the neighbours.</p>
<p>Cities are layered with many different sounds, but the home is framed as a private space of peace and quiet. Sounds that intrude are considered noise. The “good” apartment neighbour avoids sounds that penetrate neighbours’ homes. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201090/original/file-20180108-195527-qm98ev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Complaining neighbours only add to the stress a parent feels when their baby cries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/adorable-little-girl-crying-very-loudly-767038642?src=8kfT1kXdCirvR9u-Y5sXdQ-1-52">silentalex88/shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is near impossible when children are involved – and particularly when apartments are poorly designed. Key pressure points include crying at night and playing and running during the day.</p>
<p>Parents spoke about the challenges of sleep training in an apartment. They wanted to be considerate neighbours, so felt anxious and guilty when their children did not comply. Some received angry letters from neighbours, or heard them call out and bang on walls and ceilings in midnight protests. </p>
<p>One mother described the difficult juggling act of an unsettled baby and an upset neighbour:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[The neighbour] called out … ‘Pick up your baby!’ … I was so upset because we are trying our best and we were exhausted ourselves … [The neighbour] banged on the ceiling really loudly … I felt it on my feet, like it was shaking … That just kind of added to my stress … When I got back into bed after the shrieking finished and he [the baby] went back to sleep and the stomping on the roof finished … I just said, ‘I don’t know if I can do that again’ … knowing that, you know they’re hearing it all of course, and we felt terrible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Parenting anxieties were not limited to night-time. Monitoring kids’ play to minimise noise made parents feel like the “fun police”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always feel like I am constantly telling them ‘not in here, not in there, don’t do that’ … I’m constantly worried that we are annoying the neighbours. Because they are kids, they are loud. They don’t have a volume button.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Parents attempted many strategies for managing noise. These included putting down carpet and foam mats, restricting some activities to rooms without adjoining walls or to “sociable” hours, closing windows and covering air vents. The expectation that their children’s sounds do not belong in apartments weighed heavily.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When he [the neighbour] first started complaining, Harry [son] was crawling. Imagine trying to teach a crawler that they are not allowed to crawl through the house … You know, he [the neighbour] wanted the impossible and got angry with us when we couldn’t deliver that for him, with no kind of seeming effort to understand where we were coming from …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This family’s neighbour had written notes, aggressively banged on their walls and threateningly confronted the parents over their children’s noise. The mother described feeling vulnerable and at a loss:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I feel like we have entered this entirely new area of discrimination that I had no idea existed before, but is actually quite prevalent among our peers. It is common among the mothers in my mothers’ group … People just don’t like children and they don’t like children’s noise … And you know parenting is hard … So to have the ‘Oh my God I am pissing loads of people off’ in the back of your mind as well … is really uncomfortable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While not all families reported such negative experiences, almost all felt anxious about noise and had stories of friends who had experienced problems.</p>
<p>The sounds made by children were always front of mind. Aware of their neighbours’ surveillance and (at times overt) moral judgments, they changed their domestic routines and modified their homes as much as possible. </p>
<h2>People need apartments made for families</h2>
<p>Broader changes are needed. Families living with children in apartments challenge norms that delineate the home as a place of quietude; that define “good neighbours” as tranquil ones; and that position children as belonging elsewhere (detached houses). And they come up against such norms in dwellings that hamper their best efforts to regulate sound.</p>
<p>Families living in apartments actively pursue strategies for making everyday life “work”. But there is only so much that individuals can change. The wider problem of apartments’ poor acoustic design and performance persists. </p>
<p>Both <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755458617301093">cultural and technical norms must shift</a> if the policy paradigm of urban consolidation is to have any hope of meeting the needs of a diverse population.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-why-apartment-living-is-different-for-the-poor-82069">This is why apartment living is different for the poor</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88244/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie-May Kerr receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and the University of Wollongong Global Challenges Program Scholarship.
</span></em></p>In Sydney, families with children now account for one in four households living in apartments. The expectations and design of apartments have not kept up with this rapid demographic change.Sophie-May Kerr, PhD Candidate in Human Geography, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/818882017-10-06T00:55:55Z2017-10-06T00:55:55ZUrban noise pollution is worst in poor and minority neighborhoods and segregated cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188783/original/file-20171004-6757-1o8jcqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under the El tracks, downtown Chicago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/Ygzu2j">Franck Michel</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most Americans think of cities as noisy places – but some parts of U.S. cities are much louder than others. Nationwide, neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and proportions of black, Hispanic and Asian residents have higher noise levels than other neighborhoods. In addition, in more racially segregated cities, living conditions are louder for everyone, regardless of their race or ethnicity. </p>
<p>As environmental health researchers, we are interested in learning how everyday environmental exposures affect different population groups. In a <a href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp898/">new study</a> we detail our findings on noise pollution, which has direct impacts on public health.</p>
<p>Scientists have documented that environmental hazards, such as air pollution and hazardous waste sites, <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4nh830b7">are not evenly distributed</a> across different populations. Often socially disadvantaged groups such as racial minorities, the poor and those with lower levels of educational attainment experience the highest levels of exposure. These dual stresses can represent a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/end-double-jeopardy/">double jeopardy</a> for vulnerable populations. </p>
<p>Our research shows that like air pollution, noise exposure may follow a similar social gradient. This unequal burden may, in part, contribute to observed health disparities across diverse groups in the United States and elsewhere.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188922/original/file-20171005-21957-1lj82uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Decibel levels of common noise sources.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cabq.gov/environmentalhealth/noise">City of Albuquerque, New Mexico</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mapping city sounds</h2>
<p>In 2015 we stumbled across a Smithsonian Magazine <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/national-park-service-map-shows-loudest-quietest-places-us-180954372/?no-ist">post</a> about the National Park Service <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/soundmap.htm">sound map</a>. The sound estimates are meant to represent average noise levels during a summer day or night. They rely on 1.5 million hours of sound measurements across 492 locations, including urban areas and national forests, and modeling based on topography, climate and human activity. National Park Service colleagues shared their model and collaborated on our study. </p>
<p>By linking the noise model to national U.S. population data, we made some interesting discoveries. First, in both rural and urban areas, affluent communities were quieter. Neighborhoods with median annual incomes below US$25,000 were nearly 2 decibels louder than neighborhoods with incomes above $100,000 per year. And nationwide, communities with 75 percent black residents had median nighttime noise levels of 46.3 decibels – 4 decibels louder than communities with no black residents. A 10-decibel increase represents a doubling in loudness of a sound, so these are big differences. </p>
<h2>Why worry about noise?</h2>
<p>A growing body of evidence links noise from a variety of sources, including air, rail and road traffic, and industrial activity to adverse health outcomes. Studies have found that kids attending school in louder areas <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1409430">have more behavioral problems</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291701003282">perform worse on exams</a>. Adults exposed to higher noise levels report <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61613-X">higher levels of annoyance and sleep disturbances</a>. </p>
<p>Scientists theorize that since evolution programmed the human body to respond to noises as threats, noise exposures activate our natural flight-or-fight response. Noise exposure triggers the release of stress hormones, which can raise our heart rates and blood pressure even during sleep. Long-term consequences of these reactions include <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/HJH.0b013e328352ac54">high blood pressure</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1205503">Type 2 diabetes</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwr424">cardiovascular disease</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0000000000000073">lower birth weight</a>. </p>
<p>As with other types of pollution, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1068/c03r">multiple factors</a> help explain why some social groups are more exposed to noise than others. Factors include weak enforcement of regulations in marginalized neighborhoods, lack of capacity to engage in land use decisions and environmental policies that fail to adequately protect vulnerable communities. This may lead to siting of noise generating industrial facilities, highways and airports in poorer communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188796/original/file-20171004-6700-ttifvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of racial and ethnic division in Detroit, based on 2010 US census data. Red = white, blue = black, green = Asian, orange = Hispanic, yellow = other; each dot represents 25 residents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/9tmV2m">Eric Fischer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Segregated communities are louder</h2>
<p>We also found higher noise levels in more racially segregated metropolitan areas, such as Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Trenton and Memphis. This relationship affected all members of these communities. For example, noise levels in communities made up entirely of white Americans in the least segregated metropolitan areas were nearly 5 decibels quieter than all-white neighborhoods in the most segregated metropolitan areas.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211">Segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas</a> is a process that spatially binds communities of color and working-class residents through the concentration of poverty, lack of economic opportunity, exclusionary housing development and discriminatory lending policies. But why would even all-white neighborhoods in highly segregated cities be noisier than those elsewhere? Although we did not find conclusive evidence, we believe this happens because in highly segregated cities, political power is often unequally distributed along racial, ethnic and economic lines. </p>
<p>These power differences may empower some residents to manage undesirable land uses in ways that are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2006.05.007">beneficial to them</a> – for example, by forcing freeway construction through poorer communities. This scenario can lead to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122646">higher levels of environmental hazards overall</a> than would occur if power and the burdens of development were more equally spread across the community. </p>
<p>Segregation can also physically separate neighborhoods, workplaces and basic services, forcing all residents to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2016.04.008">drive more and commute farther</a>. These conditions can <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2016.04.008">increase air pollution</a> and, potentially, metro-wide noise levels for everyone. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188797/original/file-20171004-13096-zhrdrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noise protection barrier on the A7 motorway near Rijeka, Croatia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A7_(Croatia)#/media/File:Rijeka_noise_barrier_A7.jpg">lusaga - Reka</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Curbing noise pollution</h2>
<p>The U.S. government has done relatively little to regulate noise levels since <a href="http://dx.doi.org/DOI:10.1289/ehp.1307272">1981</a>, when Congress abruptly stopped funding the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-noise-control-act">Noise Control Act of 1972</a>. However, Congress did not repeal the law, so states had to assume responsibility for noise control. Few states have tried, and there has been scant progress. For example, in 2013-2014 New York City received one <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/mapping-new-york-noise-complaints">noise complaint</a> about every four minutes.</p>
<p>Without funding, noise research has proven difficult. Until recently the United States did not even have up-to-date nationwide noise maps. In contrast, multiple European countries have mapped noise, and the European Commission <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/environment/noise/research_en.htm">funds</a> noise communication plans, abatement and health studies. </p>
<p>In 2009 the World Health Organization released a <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/43316/E92845.pdf">report</a> detailing nighttime noise guidelines for Europe. They recommended reducing noise levels when possible and reducing the impact of noise when levels could not be moderated. For example, the guidelines recommended locating bedrooms on the quiet sides of houses, away from street traffic, and keeping nighttime noise levels below 40 decibels to protect human health. The agency encouraged all member states to strive for these levels in the long term, with a short-term goal of 55 decibels at night. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, inequalities in exposure to noise still exist in Europe. For example, in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.%20healthplace.2007.10.003">Wales</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2005.09.008">Germany</a>, poorer individuals have reported more neighborhood noise. </p>
<p>The most successful U.S. noise reduction efforts have centered on the airline industry. Driven by the introduction of new, more efficient and quieter engines and promoted by the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990, the number of Americans affected by aviation noise <a href="https://www.nae.edu/19582/Bridge/NoiseEngineering/ChallengesandPromisesinMitigatingTransportationNoise.aspx">declined by 95 percent</a> between 1975 and 2000. </p>
<p>Moving forward, our findings suggest that more research is needed for studies on the relationship between noise and population health in the United States – data that could inform noise regulations. Funding and research should focus on poorer communities and communities of color that appear to bear a disproportionate burden of environmental noise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan A. Casey receives funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the University of California at San Francisco Preterm Birth Initiative. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter James receives funding from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, and the Boston Nutrition Obesity Research Center.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Morello-Frosch receives funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, US EPA, the California Air Resources Board, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, and the California Breast Cancer Research Program. She is affiliated with Grist as the board of directors chair and the Switzer Environmental Leadership Program as a board member.</span></em></p>New research shows that noise pollution in US cities is concentrated in poor and minority communities. Beyond regulating airplane noise, the US has done relatively little to curb noise pollution.Joan A. Casey, Assistant Professor, Columbia UniversityPeter James, Assistant Professor, Harvard UniversityRachel Morello-Frosch, Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management & School of Public Health, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765072017-05-21T21:39:35Z2017-05-21T21:39:35ZLet cities speak: what sounds define us now?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167105/original/file-20170428-15121-xxzqu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The village bell was once a powerful symbol of sonic identity. Living in the noise of today's global cities, what sounds exist that express our communal identity?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric Fidler/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the first of two “Let Cities Speak” articles. While Western city soundscapes are increasingly homogeneous, these articles seek to explore the sounds that still define us and the ways in which we might discover new sonic identities for our cities.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When village bells tolled in pre-industrial landscapes, the sound was laden with meaning. Religious representation, the passing of the days, and imminent warnings and dangers were all attached to its perception. Their historical meaning to communities has been thoroughly researched. </p>
<p>Alain Corbin’s <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/village-bells/9780231104500">book</a>, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-century French Countryside, explores the central role these sounds played in everyday life, both in theistic and secular society. </p>
<p>The World Soundscape Project, led by Murray Schafer, investigated the acoustic horizons formed by bell sounds in their <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/%7Etruax/FVS/fvs.html">Five Village Soundscapes research</a>, and how these sonic boundaries related to community identity. </p>
<h2>The fading village bell</h2>
<p>If you have ever visited those remaining ancient villages of Europe where the noises of contemporary society remain absent, you can hear not just the initial strike of a bell but its lingering resonance rolling through the streets. It marks a time to stop and listen as the sound stretches out, before receding into inaudibility. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167101/original/file-20170428-15112-izunam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Église Saint-Julien. Some sources indicate that the church bell (cloche) dates from 1691.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jan buchholtz/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now, when we hear church bells toll, the resonant tail is lost; only the initial strike of the bell can be heard. Its initial power is enough to compete with contemporary clamours, but along with its religious and quotidian meanings, the lingering resonances of the bell are swallowed by the insistent voice of progress – the ever-present call of our cities. </p>
<p>It is easy to romanticise the sound of bells, regardless of their beatific qualities. One of a series of art interventions by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, titled <a href="http://www.triennalebrugge2015.be/src/Frontend/Files/userfiles/files/O%2BA_Press%20Release">Sounding Bruges</a> created for the 2015 Brugge Triennale, wrote a series of compositions for the carillon bells of a medieval belfry to create new compositions and rhythmic patterns. It brought to our attention the typically unwavering repetition of bell compositions. </p>
<p>This intervention acts as a reminder that the repetitive sound of village bells can be understood as the sound of control, as expressed by the religious and political authorities of the day. </p>
<p>As much as we might lament the homogenising impact of noise on our city environments – caused primarily by vehicles and air conditioning – we might also reflect on them as sonic expressions of industrial processes and technological evolution. </p>
<p>These are the sounds that have forever changed our lives, for better or worse, replacing the age of the village bell.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ppyxLFh4OFA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">For the villagers of Helmsdale in Sutherland, Scotland, the chiming of the clock tower is still part of their lives.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Searching for our sonic identity</h2>
<p>However, regardless of religious and political intent, the village bell was a powerful symbol of sonic identity. </p>
<p>In an era when global cities are defined by unerring technological drones and interruptions (i.e. sirens and hand-held devices), what <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundmark.html">soundmarks</a> express our communal identity today? </p>
<hr>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-66" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/66/7c41be27ab9817a76a894eaf1ce0e2148c045783/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<hr>
<p>In a <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-a-new-relationship-with-urban-noise-46207">previous article</a> for The Conversation, I wrote that we are in danger of becoming the “passive and defeated receptors” of our city noise. Like the ancient bells, our subtleties and particularities are at risk of being subsumed by the swamp of noise, providing no significant moment to which we can attach our identities.</p>
<p>Even the famed gun salute of Anzac Day, a soundmark in which many Australians might find identity, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/anzac-day-2017-damp-commemoration-for-diggers-fallen-and-living-20170425-gvrvpz.html">has been silenced</a>. </p>
<p>The factory workers of the 20th century, and their surrounding communities, were connected by way of the <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Sound_Signal.html">now-extinct siren</a> that called for lunch or the end of the day. The bell of the local school is a soundmark that may linger in some places, reminding the community that the sounds of children are about to fill the air (if indeed any walk home – now, it most likely follows the sounds of multiple people-carriers arriving for pick-up). </p>
<p>It is worth noting the strange dichotomy in cities like Melbourne, where the clamour of busy centres is countered by the enduring silence of the suburbs. </p>
<p>In my own suburb of Glen Huntly the night silence is relentless. I’d prefer to hear the cicadas, frogs and birds of nature – the presence of life – than the total absence of life that so often marks our suburban existence. </p>
<p>Indeed, to call nature “silent” is a fallacy. In comparison to suburbia its soundscapes are eventful and vibrant. Yet this fallacy <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151006-nature-sounds-science-animals-music/">is fast becoming fact</a> as a great silence falls across nature, concomitant with the rise of the global city.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167100/original/file-20170428-15117-1qorqlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sounds of Melbourne’s trams have provided the city with a certain ‘distinctness’ for many years now.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">VirtualWolf/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Another victim of homogenisation</h2>
<p>There is one familiar sound in my suburb, like much of Melbourne, that can still reach our ears: the lonely screech of the late-night 67 tram turning corners. I picture those workers and late-night partiers returning home, as I’m curled up in bed, its driver glaring into an illuminated distance.</p>
<p><a href="https://soundslikenoise.org/2011/10/10/trams-in-melbourne-a-soundmark/">This soundmark</a> is made all the more meaningful because there is a history in each screech – every night, for as many years as those steel parts of wheel and track have connected. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U98z1_2kBG4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The sounds of a tram travelling through the city are familiar to almost every Melburnian.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the bells of trams, like the horns of trains, have fallen victim to homogenisation. Little character to be found here, unfortunately.</p>
<p>But what about now, as community-defining sounds increasingly disappear into the noise? Could we find this to be an opportunity, rather than a lament? Do we have the opportunity to discover new sonic identities? How can communities work towards soundscapes that produce meaning? </p>
<p>I will discuss some research approaches exploring these questions in a second article.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the second “Let Cities Speak” article <a href="https://theconversation.com/let-cities-speak-reclaiming-a-place-for-community-with-sounds-76998">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Lacey has received funding from RMIT University, The City of Melbourne, The City of Casey and the Transurban Innovation Grant.</span></em></p>Sound, as a still relatively unexplored medium of urban design, provides an obvious starting point in the search for new relationships and identities in the contemporary city.Jordan Lacey, Research Fellow, Architecture & Design, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/769982017-05-21T20:10:57Z2017-05-21T20:10:57ZLet cities speak: reclaiming a place for community with sounds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167447/original/file-20170502-26332-4f7oon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Noise transformation and community-led design projects are reclaiming unwanted spaces that lay adjacent to motorways.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">rogiro/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the second of two “Let Cities Speak” articles. While Western city soundscapes are increasingly homogeneous, these articles seek to explore the sounds that still define us and the ways in which we might discover new sonic identities for our cities.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Noise is everywhere. We live with it, inside and outside our homes. It defines contemporary urban life, the world over. Its companion, silence, also holds its own: from the stretches of suburbia to the degraded spaces of nature, a seeming absence of life is apparent. </p>
<p>The first “Let Cities Speak” article finished by asking: how do communities discover sonic identities within these contemporary soundscapes? This article points to research projects that seek answers to this question.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167299/original/file-20170501-12979-13est04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Speakers run along the sides of the William Barak Bridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Ilagan/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I have argued <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/sonic-rupture-9781501309977/">elsewhere</a> that sound installations can act to “rupture” noisy soundscapes, producing zones of experiential diversity. There are many <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/article/sonic-placemaking-three-approaches-and-ten-attributes-for-the-creation-of-enduring-urban-sound-art-installations/9980C795AD85D907E7BCB1B59B413F59">international examples</a> that attempt to achieve this. The artist locates intensive listening encounters within the city, bringing our attention to new sensory experiences.</p>
<p>An excellent local example, in Melbourne, is Sonia Leber and David Chesworth’s <a href="http://leberandchesworth.com/public-spaces/proximities/">Proximites</a> at William Barak Bridge. This is a permanently fixed sound installation that provides experiential diversity for those willing to seek it. Voices of the Commonwealth countries dance around the listener as they look upon the city. The recording below provides a sample of these sounds.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="66" data-image="" data-title="Sonia Leber and David Chesworth's work at William Barak Bridge" data-size="1588002" data-source="Author provided" data-source-url="" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/719/proximities-stereo-denoise-01.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Sonia Leber and David Chesworth’s work at William Barak Bridge.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>1.51 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/719/proximities-stereo-denoise-01.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>Robin Fox created a temporary installation in Northbank, Melbourne, titled <a href="http://robinfox.com.au/projects/giant-theremin/">Giant Theremin</a>. This interactive sculpture produces electronic sounds that entice a range of playful responses from visitors, including dance, laughter and even BMX stunts.</p>
<p>But, increasingly, such artistic interventions, while important and valuable, serve only to provide the “possibility” of new listening experiences. Whether such spaces should become places of significant sonic identity is an entirely different question, and one that is presumably beyond the artist’s control. </p>
<h2>Increasing appetite for “placemaking” sounds</h2>
<p>My research is turning toward community-led design in which a more meaningful essence of “placemaking” might be found. </p>
<p>After all, how can we expect to develop sonic identities if members of the community are not involved in their very discovery? </p>
<p>I am involved in two research projects that are exploring this proposition. One reshapes motorway noise into meaningful listening experiences. The other searches for a soundmark in the silence of suburbia.</p>
<h2>Transforming motorway noise</h2>
<p>Research funded by the <a href="https://www.transurban.com/sustainability/innovation-grants">Transurban Innovation Grant</a> is working with communities living with motorway noise to discover <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/transurban-rmit-university-team-up-to-tackle-road-noise/news-story/4cfaa7f53bd70fae7c064ce663aa5f07">“noise transformation”</a> approaches that help to produce more liveable conditions. </p>
<p>Where the constant drone of passing traffic is inescapable, noise transformation combined with urban design aims to reclaim those unused green spaces that border these busy roads. </p>
<p>The research is in its early stages, but what we have found to date is that the community members who have experienced our prototype point very strongly to those transformed soundscapes that – in their words – reduce anxiety, and provide interesting listening experiences that warrant ongoing visits.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169481/original/file-20170516-11963-6z9vd8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Where noisy traffic is inescapably close (above), noise transformation work (below) combined with urban design can reclaim green spaces for public use.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Connor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169483/original/file-20170516-11945-77rymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The researchers were surprised by the community’s enthusiasm for the transformation sites. There was certainly no expectation of a positive response to what might have been seen as a band-aid solution to an ongoing urban problem. Instead, what we witnessed was a genuine curiosity and fascination with an act of futuristic placemaking that could one day be part of everyday life.</p>
<h2>Creating a suburban soundmark</h2>
<p>In Melbourne’s southeast, research funded by the City of Casey is working to integrate an interactive artwork into a community centre plaza at Clyde North. The artwork plays back local field recordings that were identified by the local community via a Facebook page. The question was posted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What sounds define your suburb?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not withstanding a few droll, though humorous, responses (“the voices in my head”, “the sounds of hoons doing burn-outs at 2am”), we were encouraged by the range of positive responses. These suggested strong civic pride – especially those that pointed towards the sounds and smells of multiculturalism and social life in general. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168493/original/file-20170509-20732-1t3sj8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A render of the forthcoming integrated artwork for the Clyde North community centre commissioned by the City of Casey. Research team: Jordan Lacey, Ross McLeod, Charles Anderson, Chuan Khoo, Eliot Palmer, Camilla Hannan, Nat Grant.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work’s behaviour is dependent on how locals choose to interact with the central “sensing” stone. The sensing stone is sculpted bluestone with four aluminium strip inlays. The aluminium strips detect human presence through the electrical charge latent in our bodies, which is sent as data to a memory system that responds with audio, lighting and vibration. </p>
<p>The more interaction, the more lively will be the <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundmark.html">soundmark</a>, which it generates at dawn and dusk. </p>
<p>Those who read the first “Let Cities Speak” article might note a relationship with the temporal consistency of the village bell. The artwork’s soundmark emerges twice a day, imbuing it with a quotidian character. </p>
<p>But in this case, the sounds played have been identified by the Clyde North community, and shaped by them. Given that the soundmark’s behaviour is based on community interaction during the day, the work acts as a type of social barometer reflecting back to the community their relationship with the artwork. </p>
<p>The following recording is of our working prototype, yet to be installed. The low hum is a vibrating steel plate, which responds to human interaction. The other sounds are field recordings of the Casey suburb, as identified by the community: a youth park and a local wetland.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="60" data-image="" data-title="Casey soundmark prototype" data-size="1445831" data-source="Author provided" data-source-url="" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/718/casey-soundmark-rec-01.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Casey soundmark prototype.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>1.38 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/718/casey-soundmark-rec-01.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<h2>It’s time to start listening</h2>
<p>While these research projects are funded by two very different sources – private industry and local council – what they both expose is an appetite within local communities to be informed and included in art, design and infrastructure projects that affect community life. </p>
<p>Rather than solutions being imposed “from the top” – by industry, governments or even public art programs – today’s challenge is to learn from the community. Because it is here that identity is to be found.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the first “Let Cities Speak” article <a href="https://theconversation.com/let-cities-speak-what-sounds-define-us-now-76507">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Lacey has received funding from RMIT University, The City of Melbourne, The City of Casey and the Transurban Innovation Grant.</span></em></p>Communities have an increasing desire to be informed and included in local art, design and infrastructure projects. This has inspired new ways of dealing with noise-afflicted areas.Jordan Lacey, Research Fellow, Architecture & Design, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/726442017-03-07T19:24:04Z2017-03-07T19:24:04ZContested spaces: you can’t stop the music – the sounds that divide shoppers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159061/original/image-20170302-5504-12rga5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When they hear the music, some people want to dance. Other shoppers want to flee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmarty/2116501096/in/photolist-4e2C3d-pqc27e-sryATK-8oZnm3-FRQfnv-74r7Ld-9EFWRq-d5Cpi9-7bDupA-oJhDHH-nDCvey-jV3CQH-gz1iag-9Cmud2-c8wCWb-cdTQoq-a473KK-8vyHpC-csFj5j-gezE1D-qw6V5m-by8nJ9-92hS7f-djfa46-bjKzNz-ecajo4-fc3Rxp-qmQcz8-cNwztA-8CMwZ3-2F8zHA-h6j3hC-cR6Vtj-8Vazh4-gCo6Jk-cNgZaL-cNwD35-edatti-fU3uGz-ni6bYb-fTZUJr-92eKik-fxYVmv-fnk9qx-pUGRo7-a9JBEM-gDKEPu-cXwics-4V54ua-6ovXhu">Justin/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the third article in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/contested-spaces-36316">Contested Spaces</a> series. These pieces look at the conflicting uses, expectations and norms that people bring to public spaces, the clashes that result and how we can resolve these.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sound is everywhere. In urban areas, it forms part of how we feel about and negotiate various social settings. </p>
<p>The space we focus on here is the retail environment. Based on interviews with shoppers about the kinds of music and sounds encountered, we are examining how and why the acoustic dimension can either heighten or diminish the shopping experience.</p>
<p>When successful, music in retail spaces stimulates positive corporeal and other sensory responses in shoppers. The other side of the coin is that a majority of interview participants reported unpleasant musical experiences in retail situations. </p>
<p>Interviewees who liked to hear music when shopping reported that it added a sense of rhythm to what they were doing. It made the experience feel more dynamic or lively than otherwise might have been the case. </p>
<p>Some shoppers reported being so energised by the music that they worried they might engage in conspicuous behaviour such as dancing, singing and other conduct not usually found in retail settings. One participant said she was so responsive and captive to music in the shops that she feared being considered a “public weirdo” by retail staff and other shoppers.</p>
<p>Those who had negative responses to music included consumers who sensed that the music played in certain stores was “discriminatory”. This was because it seemed aimed at particular gender or age groups that excluded them.</p>
<p>Volume was another important source of disquiet. The greater the volume, the greater the imposition these shoppers felt. </p>
<p>Some shoppers avoided altogether “noisy” or “loud” retail spaces. Others reported getting through the shopping experience faster than they would have liked. And some resorted to the “privatisation” of their aural experience by using personal musical devices.</p>
<h2>In what ways does music offend?</h2>
<p>But why should music and sound be contentious in retail settings? There is a long history of people using music and sound to augment the experiences of events like festivals, community and religious celebrations, as well as markets and fairs.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159059/original/image-20170302-5538-1ngmm75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some shoppers may feel music is part of a retail strategy to manipulate them into buying more.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/speakers-announcement-213232/">pixabay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One possibility is that consumers are concerned that retail atmospheres are designed to manipulate them into buying things <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916503254749">through music</a> and other forms of sensory conditioning, such as lighting, smell, temperature and colour schemes. However, this doesn’t really explain why some consumers reported feeling dislocated or not “at home” in retail environments. </p>
<p>Music and sound can often offend shoppers for other reasons, we suggest. Following the insights of microsociologist <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Lif.html?id=Sdt-cDkV8pQC">Erving Goffman</a>, we think the acoustic environment of retail shopping is a complex “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095141?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">interaction order</a>”, which is more fragile than we realise. </p>
<p>We contend that music and sound can impinge upon what Goffman termed the “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ApSW54vTsYwC&pg=PA28&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false">territories of the self</a>”. This refers to the physical and mental space that the individual expects others will provide to them. Thus, music that is perceived as “noisy”, “loud” or “annoying” – as reported by the interview subjects – threatens the boundaries that the individual seeks to protect, and expects others will observe.</p>
<p>Unlike vision or touch, sound is much more difficult to control or protect oneself one from; sound spills across thresholds and enters into situations where it is unwelcome. </p>
<p>Equally, when interview subjects reported annoyance at retail environments starting to resemble nightclubs or pubs, they were highlighting concerns about what Goffman called “<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm092/abstract">frame disputes</a>”. Music can counteract “situationally appropriate” framing, if the shopper comes to feel that the acoustic environment is not providing the right scripts, cues or definition of the situation.</p>
<h2>Can and should retailers stop the music?</h2>
<p>So how might retailers respond to the kind of “territorial offences” that some of our interview subjects identified? </p>
<p>Some have reacted to the frictions generated by sound, and other types of sensory overload, by introducing “quiet hour shopping”. As one Adelaide <a href="http://www.glamadelaide.com.au/main/silence-frewville-foodland-to-host-quiet-hour-shopping-this-tuesday/">lifestyle website</a> reported, at Frewville Foodland:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The lights will be dimmed, music and pager messages switched off, volume of the ‘beeps’ on the check-outs lowered, there will be no coffee grinding and strong smells will be reduced where possible. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We applaud attempts to creatively redesign the shopping experience and to provide consumers with sensorially enriched retail environments. However, we would caution against simplistic understandings of the impacts of sound on the retail experience; nor do we condone seeing music and sound as something that should be avoided. </p>
<p>It is true that humans possess a limited capacity to process auditory information. At worst, this leaves scope for exploitation in the form of <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/disco-inferno/">sonic torture</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-sound-of-fear-65230">sonic weaponry</a>. But it is also true, as our respondents reported, that music and sound can enrich experiences by enhancing the mood, tempo and liveliness associated with certain activities. </p>
<p>The last thing we want is for all retail spaces to sound the same. As experimental composer and Zen Buddhism practitioner <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1ECundMF9xAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Silence+JOhn+cage&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-4pXpyrbSAhWMXbwKHbYtC0sQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=make%20a%20silence&f=false">John Cage noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We tend to be annoyed because, when we bump into them in the supermarket aisle, sounds don’t say “excuse me”. However, if Cage is right and there is no such thing as a silent retail space, we might as well as learn to share supermarket aisles with sounds beyond our control and sounds not on our playlists.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other pieces in the series as they are published <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/contested-spaces-36316">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Unlike vision or touch, sound is much more difficult to control or avoid; music in particular spills across thresholds and intrudes into situations where it is unwelcome.Michael James Walsh, Assistant Professor of Social Science, University of CanberraEduardo de la Fuente, Senior Lecturer in Creativity and Innovation, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602962016-06-20T10:04:25Z2016-06-20T10:04:25ZCracking the mystery of the ‘Worldwide Hum’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126373/original/image-20160613-29238-dncf1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The author began hearing the sound at night, between the hours of 10 and 11 p.m.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-135708347/stock-photo-foggy-street-with-nobody-in-the-suburb.html?src=OTFNmJT9l1FgyTBWhLFzWw-1-38">'Street' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the spring of 2012, when I was living near the coastal village of Sechelt, on British Columbia’s picturesque Sunshine Coast, I began hearing a humming sound, which I thought were float planes.</p>
<p>The noise usually started later at night, between 10 and 11 p.m. My first clue that something unusual was happening came with the realization that the sound didn’t fade away, like plane noises typically do. And the slightest ambient noise – exhaling audibly, even turning my head quickly – caused it to momentarily stop. One night after the sound started I stepped outside the house. Nothing.</p>
<p>I was the only person in the house who could hear it; my family said they didn’t know what I was talking about. </p>
<p>Naturally, I assumed something in the house was the culprit, and I searched for the source in vain. I even ended up cutting the power to the entire house. The sound got louder. </p>
<p>While I couldn’t hear the sound outdoors, I could still hear it in my car at night with the windows closed and the ignition off. I drove for miles in every direction, and it was still there in the background when I stopped the car. I was able to rule out obvious sources: industrial activity, marine traffic, electric substations and highway noise. </p>
<p>When I searched on the internet for “unusual low-frequency humming noise,” I soon realized that others had conducted the same search. I was part of the small fraction of people who can hear what is called the “Worldwide Hum” or, simply, the “Hum.” </p>
<p>The questions motivating me and thousands of others were the same: “What’s causing this? Can it be stopped?” </p>
<h2>One geoscientist’s theory</h2>
<p>The classic description of the Hum is that it sounds like a truck engine idling. For some, it’s a distant rumbling or droning noise. It can start and stop suddenly or wax and wane over time. For others, the Hum is loud, relentless and life-altering. </p>
<p>I eventually came across one of the few serious papers on the <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.518.9056&rep=rep1&type=pdf">topic</a>. It was written in 2004 by geoscientist David Deming (who’s also a Hum hearer). </p>
<p>Deming began by describing the standard history: The Hum was first documented in the late 1960s, around Bristol, England. It first appeared in the United States in the late 1980s, in Taos, New Mexico.</p>
<p>He then examined the competing hypotheses for the source of the Hum. Many have pointed to the electric grid or cellphone towers. But this theory is dismissed on two grounds: cellphones didn’t exist in the 1960s, and the frequency emitted by both cell towers and the electric grid can be easily blocked by metal enclosures.</p>
<p>He wondered whether <a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/show/mass_delusions_and_hysterias_highlights_from_the_past_millennium">mass hysteria</a> was to blame, a psychological phenomenon in which rumor and “collective delusions” lead to the appearance of physical ailments for which there’s no medical explanation. The fact that so many people have researched the Hum on their own, using a search engine – rather than hearing about it from some other person – moves the conversation away from delusion and hysteria spread by word of mouth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126390/original/image-20160613-29222-k3ykam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some have dismissed cellphone towers as a potential source.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-171291503/stock-photo-some-silhouetted-antennas-on-the-top-of-a-hill.html?src=xLWGD1FhmP8s4UxWzagTyQ-1-71">'Cell Towers' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Deming looked at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), an isolated military compound in Alaska that uses radio waves to study outer space and for testing advanced communication techniques – and a favorite focus of conspiracy theorists, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/06/10/319539712/bye-bye-to-the-home-of-a-favorite-internet-conspiracy-theory">who have accused the facility</a> of acts ranging from mind control to weather control. He studied the possibility of <a href="http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Otoacoustic-Emissions/">otoacoustic emissions</a>, which are naturally occurring sounds caused by the vibration of hair cells in the ear. </p>
<p>Deming eventually fingered <a href="http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/introduction-vlf">Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio waves</a> (between 3 kHz and 30 kHz) as the most likely culprit. The world’s military powers use massive land-based and airborne transmitters on these frequencies in order to communicate with submerged submarines. Radio waves at these frequencies can penetrate up to a solid inch of aluminum.</p>
<p>In the paper, Deming proposes a simple and elegant experiment for testing this hypothesis. Hum hearers randomly enter three identical-looking boxes. The first box blocks VLF radio signals, the second box is an anechoic (soundproof) chamber and the third box is the control. </p>
<p>He left the experiment for others to pursue, and while there are some practical difficulties with the design, Deming’s overall concept has motivated the experiments I am currently conducting. </p>
<h2>A disciplined inquiry begins</h2>
<p>A plethora of pseudoscience and wild conspiracy theories has the potential to drown out the serious work in this area. I’ve encountered seemingly serious people who have argued that the Hum is caused by <a href="http://allnewspipeline.com/Underground_Tunnels_Unexplained_Booms.php">tunneling under the earth</a>, the <a href="http://spectralintelligencesolutions.com/gang_stalking.html">electronic targeting</a> of specific individuals, <a href="http://www.theworldhum.com/">aliens</a> and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/mysterious-hum-keeping-people-up-all-night-could-be-mating-fish-8900747.html">mating fish</a>. </p>
<p>Given the need for disciplined inquiry into the phenomenon, in late 2012 I started <a href="http://www.thehum.info">The World Hum Map and Database Project</a>. The database gathers, documents and maps detailed and anonymous information from people who can hear the Hum. It provides raw data for research in a strictly moderated and serious forum for research and commentary, while providing a sense of community for people whose lives have been negatively affected by the Hum.</p>
<p>Most people have some experience with how disruptive some types of noises can be, which is why there are often noise ordinances in many cities and towns, especially at night. There are many sufferers who dread the nighttime because of how loud and relentless the Hum can be. The Hum database is replete with descriptions of desperate people who have been tormented by the noise for years. The phrase “driving me crazy” is all too common. (I feel fortunate that, in my case, the Hum is more of a curiosity than it is an irritant.)</p>
<p>The project also aims to validate and normalize the phenomenon by discussing it alongside other widely reported auditory phenomena, such as <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tinnitus/home/ovc-20180349">tinnitus</a>, a relatively common medical condition that causes people to hear high-pitched squealing tones. Those who experience tinnitus and also the Hum report the two as being completely different in character.</p>
<p>The latest update of the Hum Map, from June 6, presents roughly 10,000 map and data points, and we’ve already made some notable findings.</p>
<p>For example, we’ve found that the mean and median age of Hum hearers is 40.5 years, and 55 percent of hearers are men. This goes against the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum">widely repeated</a> theory that the Hum mainly affects middle-aged and older women.</p>
<p>Interestingly, there are eight times as many ambidextrous people among hearers as there are in the general population. As more data are collected from Hum hearers, I hope that specialists in demographics and inferential statistics will be able to generate more detailed results. </p>
<h2>The goals of the research</h2>
<p>The historical record of the Hum is crucial, because if the current version as narrated by Deming is correct, many theories can immediately be ruled out. After all, cellphones and HAARP didn’t exist until decades after the Worldwide Hum was first documented in England in the late 1960s. I currently have a researcher digging into the Times of London digital archive to search for mentions of the Hum going back to the 18th and 19th centuries. If convincing examples are found, then the direction of my research will shift dramatically because all modern technologies could be ruled out.</p>
<p>In my view, there are currently four hypotheses for the source of the world Hum that survive the most superficial scrutiny. </p>
<p>The first hypothesis – argued by Deming and the one I’m currently pursuing – is that the Hum is rooted in Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio transmissions. It’s increasingly accepted now that the human body will sometimes experience electromagnetic (EM) energy and interpret it in a way that creates sounds. This was established for high-frequency EM energy by the American neuroscientist Alan Frey in his infamous <a href="http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/?page_id=594">“microwave hearing” experiments</a>, which showed that certain radio frequencies can actually be heard as sounds. </p>
<p>Today, there are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12379225">biophysical models</a> that predict and explain the impact VLF EM energy has on living tissue. I have designed and built a VLF radio blocking box that should be able to test whether VLF radio frequencies are a prerequisite for generating the Hum.</p>
<p>The second hypothesis is that the Hum is the grand accumulation of low-frequency sound and human-generated infrasound (sounds with audio frequencies below roughly 20 Hz and which can be felt more than they can be heard). This includes everything from highway noise to all manner of industrial activity. </p>
<p>The third is that the Hum is a terrestrial or geological phenomenon that generates low-frequency sounds or perceptions of those sounds. For example, there is a <a href="http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/animal_eqs.php">well-documented history</a> of animals predicting earthquakes and taking action to save themselves. From an evolutionary perspective, there may be survival value in having members of a population highly sensitive to some types of vibrations. When it comes to the Hum, some humans may have a similar physiological mechanism in place.</p>
<p>The fourth is that the Hum is an internally generated phenomenon, perhaps rooted in a particular anatomical variation, genetic predisposition or the result of toxicity and medication. </p>
<p>The Hum is now the subject of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/132128/maddening-sound">serious media coverage</a> and, increasingly, scientific scrutiny. The overall goal of my project and the people who contribute to it is to find the source of the Hum and, if possible, stop it. </p>
<p>If the Hum is man-made, then my task is to raise public awareness and advocate turning away from the technologies that are causing it. If the source is exogenous and natural, there’s the possibility that there may be no escape from it, apart from masking it with background sounds.</p>
<p>Of course there is the remote possibility that one of the more exotic explanations will prove to be correct. But, as in all science, it seems best to start with what we know and is plausible, as opposed to what we don’t know and is implausible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glen MacPherson is affiliated with the British Columbia Teachers' Federation. </span></em></p>Shortly after Glen MacPherson started hearing strange humming noises, he created the World Hum and Database Project so people around the world could document their own experiences with the Hum.Glen MacPherson, Lecturer, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/523392015-12-17T09:53:51Z2015-12-17T09:53:51ZHow noise pollution is changing animal behaviour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106033/original/image-20151215-23198-1au0gnp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Urban noise pushes birds to sing in high pitch and ship sound deafens whales and dolphins.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://linkbun.ch/03wvq">John Haslam, Eric Bégin, IK's World Trip, Green Fire Productions, flickker photos, Jay Ebberly / Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Noise pollution, generally an unintended byproduct of urbanisation, transport and industry, is a key characteristic of human development and population growth. In some cases, it is produced intentionally, for example when seismic surveys are being carried out using powerful airgun arrays to explore and map the seafloor, or active sonar, which uses sound waves to detect objects in the ocean. </p>
<p>All of this noise – whether intentional or not – has the ability to alter the acoustic environment of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. This can have a dramatic effect on the animals that live in them, perhaps even driving evolutionary change as species adapt to or avoid noisy environments.</p>
<h2>Rising noise levels</h2>
<p>The dramatic and comparatively recent rise in noise levels is marked in both magnitude and extent, with an estimated <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/environment-and-health/noise/data-and-statistics">30% of the European population</a> exposed to road traffic noise levels greater than 55dB (decibels) at night, well above <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/environment-and-health/noise/policy/who-night-noise-guidelines-for-europe">the 40dB target recommended by the World Health Organisation</a>. Even remote natural areas do not escape the reach of anthropogenic, or manmade, noise. One study <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-011-9643-x">across 22 US national parks</a> demonstrated that this kind of noise was, on average, audible more than 28% of the time.</p>
<p>Noise is not just irritating; we have known for some time that <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253729/">it can have direct human health impacts</a>. Indeed, chronic exposure to noise levels above 55dB dramatically increases the risks of heart disease and stroke, while aircraft noise <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=70319&fileId=S0033291701003282">has been shown</a> to impact the development of reading skills in children attending schools close to busy airports. <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/136466/e94888.pdf">The WHO estimates</a> that in Europe at least a million healthy life years are lost every year due to traffic noise.</p>
<h2>Changing behaviours</h2>
<p>But what are the implications for wildlife, particularly given how important sound production and hearing are for a range of behaviours, such as locating food, avoiding predators and finding a mate? For example, bats and dolphins rely on high frequency sonar to detect highly mobile prey, while great tits, red deer and grasshoppers are among the many species that advertise their dominance and desirability using vocalisations. Elephants <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/elephants-recognize-the-voices-of-their-enemies-1.14846">can even use sound</a> to determine the threat presented by different human groups. </p>
<p>Scientific interest in the effects of noise pollution on wildlife has intensified over the past decade and we are now developing a better understanding of how noise can impact behaviour, population and community level processes <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12207/abstract">across a range of animal species</a>. Using experimental and observational approaches to characterise and explore the specific effects of different noise sources, the evidence generated from these studies is considerable, particularly among songbirds and marine mammals, which rely heavily on sound and vocal communication. </p>
<p>We now know, for example, that the foraging, vocal behaviour and physiological stress of cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – can be <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12207/abstract">impacted by ship noise</a>. This is of particular concern for species such as the endangered <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/1/33.short">North Atlantic right whale</a> that inhabits coastal US waters that experience very high levels of shipping traffic. Furthermore, in addition to shifts in distribution and vocal behaviour, military sonar has also been linked <a href="http://www.livescience.com/44598-new-whale-stranding-from-sonar.html">to the stranding of cetaceans</a>. </p>
<p>The impacts are not just limited to marine mammals, considerable negative effects of noise are also documented in marine and freshwater fish and invertebrates. These include recent studies that have demonstrated compromised <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213001991">anti-predator behaviour in crabs</a> and eels exposed to ship noise.</p>
<p>In terrestrial habitats, bird diversity and abundance has been shown to decline as a result of chronic noise levels <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12207/abstract">around cities and along roadways</a>. A number of species have demonstrated adjustments to their vocal behaviour in an attempt to adapt to the cacophony of human noise. Urban great tits for example, are able to <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6946/full/424267a.html">raise the frequency of their calls</a> to reduce acoustical masking by predominantly low-frequency urban noise, while European robins adjust <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/368">the timing of their singing</a> to coincide with quieter periods in the city. Meanwhile, black-chinned hummingbirds and house finches appear to actively select noisy areas <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209013281">near active gas wells</a> to avoid nest predation by more disturbance sensitive species.</p>
<p>Roads are a major source of terrestrial noise due to their spatial extent and the volume of traffic. A <a href="http://bit.ly/2247Jgl">2003 study</a> calculated that 83% of the lower 48 states of the US was within about 1km of a road. I have been working with colleagues at Colorado State University and the National Park Service to explore the effects of road noise on the prairie dog, a social mammal. </p>
<p>Our research demonstrated that prairie dogs, which commonly live in habitats near roads and urban areas, significantly reduced their foraging and increased their vigilance behaviour <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347214002486">when exposed to road noise</a>. Such shifts in behaviour could have impacts on their long-term population health particularly in combination with other stressors such as disease and habitat loss. </p>
<p>Road noise <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12997/full">has also been shown</a> to impair the foraging efficiency of bats <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12207/abstract">and alter vocal communication</a> in frogs and invertebrates.</p>
<h2>Difficulties of measurement</h2>
<p>Studying noise isn’t an easy thing to do. First of all, sound levels cannot accurately be measured and defined using a single absolute scale, such as those used for temperature, rainfall and wind speed. For simplicity we often just refer to a decibel level, but this does not take into account the duration and frequency of the acoustical signal. The specific effects of noise also need to be disentangled from the sources of disturbance that often accompany it, including human presence, habitat fragmentation and chemical pollution. </p>
<p>The need to further understand the complex biological effects of noise and establish scientifically relevant thresholds of noise exposure is a priority for human health and wildlife conservation. Rapid development, urbanisation and population growth are set to continue into the future. As a result we need to ensure a collaborative effort between scientists, industry and government to protect natural soundscapes where possible, while also promoting new technology and approaches that mitigate the effects of noise.</p>
<p>Man made noise is a relatively recent phenomenon, particularly in evolutionary terms, but scientific studies have demonstrated that it has the potential to adjust behaviour, alter physiology and even restructure animal communities. Ultimately, such a strong selection pressure could <a href="http://bit.ly/1SZgHFI">drive evolutionary change</a>. These are complex questions that are now being explored by experts across a range of disciplines from animal behaviour to bioacoustics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graeme Shannon received funding from the US National Park Service. </span></em></p>Noise pollution, whether on land or under water, can affect animals in interesting – and not always positive – ways.Graeme Shannon, Lecturer, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/462072015-08-19T04:01:55Z2015-08-19T04:01:55ZWe need a new relationship with urban noise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92332/original/image-20150819-12418-1jht1t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After travelling through the bush, returning to the cacophonies of the sonic city can be exhilarating.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">drp</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You know the drill – walking through the city alone you have your headphones on, your music playing; it guides your footsteps, marks your rhythm. You see cars and trucks, ongoing construction work, but hear only what you want to hear. But what if we built a new relationship with urban noise, rather than escaping from and denigrating it?</p>
<p>After travelling through the bush and absorbing its quiet ambiences, returning to the cacophonies of the sonic city can be exhilarating. The body is immediately swamped with an energy that speaks of action, progress, and possibility. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92335/original/image-20150819-12414-yozc01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russolo and the intonarumori.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Countless working machines and human activities combine to form an intoxicating urban roar. And yet, in just a few days, our bodies are fatigued by the constant bombardment of noise. Our response is to withdraw. The internalising of thoughts as the outer world presses in; our voice silenced by the city’s indefatigable roar. </p>
<p>The former characterisation – that of the exhilarating city – can be traced to the <a href="http://www.theartstory.org/movement-futurism.htm">Futurists</a>, an amalgam of 1920s Italian fascists who sensed great excitement in the march of modernity. Their sonic champion <a href="http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/collections/artisti/biografia.php?id_art=175">Luigi Russolo</a> invented grand machines called <a href="http://www.thereminvox.com/article/articleview/116.html">intonarumori</a> that could recreate the sounds of modernity in concert hall conditions. </p>
<p>In his manifesto <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3057952-the-art-of-noise">The Art of Noise</a> (1913) he writes of the sonic city: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>our ears rejoice in it, for they are attuned to modern life, rich in all sorts of noises. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Noise-sounds, as he called them, were to be celebrated. </p>
<p>In contrast, acoustic ecology, a sonic outgrowth of an emerging environmental sensibility, some 50 years later came to bemoan the urban soundscape as a mess of sounds that prevented us from forming enriched listening relationships with the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92334/original/image-20150819-12440-1sa6mo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tri Nguyen</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This awareness was facilitated by the electrical revolution, and the rise of the motorcar, in which the now familiar drones of the city were becoming dominant. The movement’s founder, Murray Schafer wrote in his book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1445856.The_Tuning_of_the_World">The Tuning of the World</a> (1977):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when […] the voice cannot be heard the environment is harmful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His suggestion being that, when individual voices are silenced by the roaring city, we have lost our shared aural culture. </p>
<p>Together these divergent views form an opposition that provides sound makers – musicians, sound artists, composers and sound designers – with endless conversational fodder. </p>
<p>Noise music aficionados can take great offence to the charge that silence is pure, while trained composers may dismiss noise music as an undifferentiated cacophony. This musical clash is surely a matter of taste. </p>
<p>Take for example the band <a href="https://neubauten.org/">Einstürzende Neubauten</a>, whose noise music seems to grow increasingly refined. At a recent Melbourne concert their arrangement of “junk-like” material appeared, and sounded, like a post-apocalyptic ensemble of profound poetic grace.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Einstürzende Neubauten, Sabrina.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The distinction becomes even more interesting when considered in the context of sound culture. Sonic theorist <a href="http://www.brandonlabelle.net">Brandon La Belle</a> suggests in his book, <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/background-noise-second-edition-9781628923520/">Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art</a> (2006), that acoustic ecologists, by dismissing urban noise, might be missing the world’s most expressive moment. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/acoustic-territories-9781441161369/">Elsewhere</a> he brings attention to the unerring silences of city-suburbs, where the absence of noise is associated with a form of social control. In contrast to the silenced suburbs, Franciso Lopez’s <a href="http://www.franciscolopez.net/env.html">La Selva</a> (1998) reminds us that the natural world is anything but silent – his rainforest composition blares with multiple noises. </p>
<p>So in fact the silence-noise distinction is a constructed difference rather than a reality. Yes, the city can be noisy, but equally its internal spaces and suburban stretches can be oppressively silent. And the bush constantly reminds us that it is a mixture of the two – think of the silence of a still atmosphere before the onslaught of a storm.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Francisco López, La Selva.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Urban noise becomes problematic when it is <em>constantly present</em>. Where there is a constant, there is relentless similarity. And where there is relentless similarity, there is boredom, routine and banality. </p>
<p>The reason a city’s roar can arouse excitement in us after a time of absence is because, for a moment, it acts as a point of difference. A sonic flood momentarily overwhelms the body, which must adapt to the new environment.</p>
<p>But upon adaption, bodily stresses caused by noises become the norm. And like all living things, when stressed, we become reactive. </p>
<p>Have we silenced our suburbs to act as a stark contrast to the city’s busy centres? </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Lowlands, Susan Philipsz.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Do we withdraw into our iPads, smartphones, and noise-cancelling headphones to escape the city’s noises? It seems our bodies are reacting to stress.</p>
<p>I concur that acoustic design is a matter of retrieving our aural culture, that listening is an integral part of connecting with each other and the world around us. But noise removal is not the only answer. </p>
<p>Urban planners might begin to design a diverse city by supporting a creative reshaping of the sonic city. Sound installation artists have shown us multiple ways that we might begin to achieve this. </p>
<p>Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger’s <a href="https://vimeo.com/29100787">Harmonic Bridge</a> (1998), Susan Philipsz <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2010/turner-prize-2010-artists-susan-philipsz">Lowlands</a> (2010) and Max Neuhaus <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gahUMGmKzIA">Times Square</a> (1977-) are just three examples of constructed sonic localisations that reshape urban noise into evocative listening experiences.</p>
<p>We should build new relationships with urban noise, rather than escaping from and denigrating it. To do this we must become urban storytellers and actively reshape the urban roar, rather than becoming its passive and defeated receptors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Lacey has previously received funding from The City of Melbourne Public Art Program.</span></em></p>After travelling through the bush, returning to the cacophonies of the sonic city can be exhilarating. The body is immediately swamped with an energy that speaks of action, progress, and possibility.Jordan Lacey, Research Fellow, Architecture & Design, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.