New York Noise (Rome, Paris, Athens: how much, homes, neighborhoods)
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Totally depends on which neighborhood you live in. There was an article in the NY Post recently about the loudest neighborhoods. I think Wash Heights near the GWB was the loudest. Average Decibels were measured, and this particular neighborhood and a few others were actually noisy enough to be in the range that causes hearing loss after prolonged exposure. I can tell you that after years of hearing the elevated train, I still can't stand the noise it makes.
So some neighborhoods can be very noisy, others I am sure are quieter.
It all depends on where you live. I used to live on St. Marks in the East Village which was loud on the street but I lived on the 5th floor in the back and rarely heard a thing. Now I live near the GWB and it is quieter than the street I used to live on in Harlem. The only thing that really bothers me are the occasional helicopters in the middle of the night. They give me bad 9/11 flashbacks.
I never realized how noisy New York was until I took my 4 week old son outside for the first time on the upper west side of Manhattan, and noticed how much he flinched in my arms everytime a siren went off, a garbage can slammed down, cars honked, trucks went rattling by, etc. I looked up and thought, "Hey, it's really noisy here." I didn't notice until I watched my baby notice and be startled. Then, of course, I wanted the whole city to quiet down. -LOL
According to acocustic psychologist Arline Bronzaft's 1975 landmark study:
Selecting Noise as a Research Issue
As an environmental psychologist living in New York City, I decided to focus my attention on a problem that has been identified by the Police Quality of Life Hotline as the number one complaint— NOISE. Congested highways, crowded high-rises, and a subway that thunders past the homes of hundreds of thousands of people make New York City a noisy place to live in. Can’t we do something to lessen the noise of the subways, limit the numbers of cars on our roads, and pass zoning laws to stop the proliferation of high-rise buildings in overdeveloped communities?
Pondering the fact that the noise of New York City was harmful to its inhabitants, especially the children, I gave serious thought to conducting a study on the effects of elevated train noise on children’s learning. The opportunity to carry out such a study was provided by a school principal. He believed that the students in his school who attended classrooms lying adjacent to elevated train tracks were being adversely affected by train noise. What made this school an ideal site for research was the presence of a group of classrooms on the other side of the building that did not face the tracks.
Comparing the reading scores for these two groups of children, one on the noisy side and the other on the quiet side, I discovered that by the sixth grade, the children on the noisy side were about one year behind in reading (Bronzaft and McCarthy, 1975).
The paper starts on the pdf page 24 of the journal. http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/wfae/journal/scape_2.pdf (broken link)
I know that for years noise was by far the leading complaint called in to 3-1-1. I think it's gotten a little better, or maybe my hearing's just deteriorated so I don't notice so much. Maybe?!!
The construction just never seems to end. Anywhere. I think that contributes to the problem. When they were expanding the subway downtown by the ferry - I think it was last summer - they had to set off dynamite. There were signs everywhere telling you what the sirens meant. 1 toot for this, 2 for that. So you would hear these sirens and then a giant explosion and a little ground shaking. I kept thinking WHERE AM I???
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