[HN Gopher] The quietest places in the loudest cities
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The quietest places in the loudest cities
Author : NaOH
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-02-11 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (earth.fm)
(TXT) w3m dump (earth.fm)
| solardev wrote:
| I was really curious about their methodology, since this seems
| like a very non-trivial dataset to acquire.
|
| But TLDR they just scraped a bunch of reviews for mentions of the
| words 'quiet', 'relaxing', 'tranquil', 'calm', and 'peaceful'.
| It's not the same as actually sampling sound levels throughout a
| city. Probably many of the quietest places won't have map
| listings and reviews at all.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Yeah it would have been nice to see some sort of actual
| analytic and quantitively measured heat maps that were maybe
| crowd sourced from the relatively large communities of people
| interested in noise pollution world wide. But the layout is
| pretty.
| solardev wrote:
| > But the layout is pretty.
|
| Yes, but I hate how they use form over function to hide poor
| data :( It's the kind of high-gloss presentation that makes
| me immediately suspicious.
|
| If they simply called the report "people's favorite places to
| relax in cities" that would've been more more accurate, but
| less marketable, I suppose.
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| That explains why a garden near me shows as 'quiet' - it's a
| lovely garden, but it's next to two busy roads, so it's
| definitely not quiet.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| The garden is quiet, but the roads are noisy.
| thakoppno wrote:
| > a very non-trivial dataset to acquire
|
| Any crowdsourcing theories about how many samples would be
| needed to accomplish this mission? Presume phones have
| sufficient sensors to acquire samples.
| solardev wrote:
| In my completely non-expert opinion, I think it would also be
| a hard dataset to normalize across mic sensitivities/auto
| gain control/time of day/weather/phone orientation/etc., even
| if you got a billion people to submit readings.
|
| Still, there have been previous attempts at this:
|
| 2013:
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2013/10/22/112756/noise-
| pol...
|
| 2019, with calibration: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science
| /article/abs/pii/S00036...
|
| 2023, iOS only in the USA:
| https://deohs.washington.edu/noise-across-america-study
|
| There's a bunch more on Google Scholar, actually.
| njarboe wrote:
| Was hoping for actual sound readings in places like Central Park.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It's striking that "in the world" seems to exclude almost all the
| land mass and humans of the world, and all the most populated
| cities in the world. I'm sure Bangkok is louder than all these
| cities, and I'd be curious about the pools of silence that might
| exist there. Those are harder won than a quiet park is a
| relatively quiet (compared to say Lagos) city in a quiet European
| country.
| the_shivers wrote:
| This was quite disappointing. It would be interesting to see what
| are actually the loudest cities (via measuring sound at various
| spots), but this doesn't do that. It doesn't even tell you if
| European or American cities are louder.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| There's a small park in Cleveland, OH (Wade Oval?) that convinced
| me of the value of elevation in creating urban quiet.
|
| From memory, it's a bowl approximately 3m or so below street
| level at the lowest.
|
| Yet despite the modest depth, it was impressively quiet inside.
| trgn wrote:
| I'm the opposite. I live on a crest of a bowl, and it's if I
| can hear everything, people talking in their yards many houses
| away.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Bristle your house/apartment with directional microphones and
| signs saying "Notice: Your public conversation is being
| streamed to the Internet"
|
| Maybe people will change their habits!
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I don't buy this. No way Cagliari is way louder than San
| Francisco.
| eatonphil wrote:
| I used to live in the back-facing first floor apartment off
| Atlantic Ave (basically the busiest street?) in Brooklyn and I
| almost never heard anything going on outside. It was always weird
| stepping outside to the very lively street.
|
| It was very strangely quiet and I didn't particularly like it.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| According to this page the noisiest city in Europe would be
| Vienna. I have some doubts about this. I have no idea how they
| measured this but I would expect there to be some bias in the
| data.
|
| Noise levels are very hard to measure as they are very different
| depending on where in the city you live. It also is even harder
| to measure in practice because the building standard can greatly
| affect how loud it is inside.
|
| For Vienna you can find noise measurements online and really
| outside of very busy roads the city is pretty quiet:
| https://maps.laerminfo.at/
| jahnu wrote:
| Haha, fellow Vienna resident here and I live on the Wienzeile
| in the 5th. It is one of the quietest cities on the planet
| considering the population density. The 5th has the same
| population density and area as Hell's Kitchen, New York and yet
| half the time you wonder where the heck everyone is hiding,
| it's so quiet here.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Please someone do this for New Orleans.
|
| e: ok most of those spots are fine but whoever thinks the
| Riverfront Park is as quiet as the Fly is nuts
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| "around the world".
|
| > USA and half Europe only.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I just looked up my city, and then zoomed into one of their
| locations indicated as "quiet". I can attest that the one I
| looked at is not "quiet" from city noise as much as quiet from
| other people. It's located downtown, and is a park showcasing
| historic lifestyle of when the city was founded. You can easily
| hear the very nearby highway, but it is people quiet as it's
| pretty much only ever visited by kids taking a school field trip.
| I've been on a film shoot using the site as a location, and it is
| definitely not film set quiet.
| pkulak wrote:
| Friendly reminder that cities aren't loud, cars are loud. Any
| measure of city loudness is just "which cities have the most
| traffic".
| dsizzle wrote:
| Yes, and specifically cars intentionally made to be loud. One
| obnoxious car with a loud muffler can disturb people in their
| homes many blocks away!
| Ajay-p wrote:
| During the pandemic, my wife and I spent a lot of time on
| Facetime with her sister in Los Angeles. I remember how loud it
| was for her, people yelling, fire crackers, music, vehicles, a
| near constant noise cloud outside. It differed so remarkably with
| our home, which was very quiet, that I took note.
| wslh wrote:
| Is this article real? I have not been in every country and city
| in the world but... how Berlin is not at the top? They have
| several types of transportation simultaneously going and walking
| through the Tiergarten district (not the park itself!) while is
| incredible quiet. Even passing to touristic places makes you
| wonder if that spot is really a touristic place.
| jpswade wrote:
| I don't think this is exactly what it means, but I recommend if
| you want some quiet in a busy city, go into a library or a book
| store. Typically they are quiet and calm places, offering a break
| from the sensory overload that is a city.
| HeOwnsTwitter wrote:
| This is an enlightening article. I've had tinnitus and
| hyperacusis for my entire adult life. I used to be able to live
| in a reasonably quiet high rise. In fact I started programming
| remotely full time from home in an urban high rise condominium.
|
| After many life disasters in part related to urban living with
| these conditions, I have found myself long term homeless and
| destitute. I tried moving back into a city a few years ago, in a
| "luxury" building that had poor construction standards,
| particularly in terms of the sound isolation from neighbors and
| outside.
|
| If I could go back, I'd place sound isolation at the top of the
| list of requirements, given my disability. Might have helped to
| restart software development. Bummer.
|
| Great article.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| I've lived in the Boston area for a long time, and I'm surprised
| that it's cited as the noisiest US city. I have no formal reason
| why; it just doesn't seem like an unusually noisy city.
|
| On a related topic, it's very hard to quantify noise exposure. We
| live on a hill in a northern suburb, and one of the biggest
| sources of our noise is the north-south highway 2.5 miles to the
| west. If the wind is from the west, I can aurally track trucks
| going up and down the highway. If not, it may be inaudible.
| relyks wrote:
| If you look at their metrics and sources for the noise data, the
| methodology is clearly faulty and subjective. The only way to get
| accurate noise data is to place an array of field recorders to
| sample sound from each location. Most of the studies listed and
| their use of subjective sentiment from reviews of those places do
| not use any form of noise measurement.
| sega_sai wrote:
| Something's wrong with this. It seems it's a garbage in, garbage
| out rating. I.e. Edinburgh is at the top in the UK. I clicked
| there and it has a few measurements at 5 random places.
| loughnane wrote:
| I'm in Boston, it's not loud. I took a quick skim through their
| methodology and each tactic seems sensible, but taken together
| they miss the mark.
|
| I don't doubt that they're measuring something real. Maybe it's
| frequency of siren's (be they hospital or police cars), but to
| jump to "world's loudest cities" is a claim that the research
| doesn't hold up. All along the emerald necklace[0] are quiet
| spots. The city is old so tons of streets have relatively slow
| traffic.
|
| Makes me doubt everything else.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Necklace
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