The Quiet City

Somehow this begins in New Orleans, somewhere along the Lafitte neutral ground, sometime in the fall of 2010. The term “second line” first crosses my ear. Within minutes, its meaning indelibly resonates as the Treme Brass Band marches up Galvez toward Orleans Avenue wearing black, flat topped caps, piped to match the instruments. The line grows, the street courses with hundreds of spectators and participants, chiefly rapt in harmonic joy. Being where the bontemps rouler, the city readily avails itself to the flow of the second line for what seems like miles, until eventually, it dissipates into smaller and subtler vectors unrecognizable to the ear.

A bit over six years pass.

Now in upper Manhattan — though it could be in any of over 600 cities worldwide — I nestle into a throng, shoehorned into the city grid and disquieted over the results of the still-raw Presidential election. Those around me now wearing a different sort of cap: freshly knit, resolutely pink, top corners piqued and feline. Akin to music, a sort of cacophonous dirge pushes the marchers slowly forward. Mass murmur, high pitched holler, and megaphonic chants define the sustained din of protest until dusk dampens the collective hum.

Although wildly synesthetic, these memories resound as uniquely visceral instances of what an acoustician or perception psychologist may refer to as “subjective sound.” This is a type of sound that carries a deep psychological effect, which transcends objectivity — e.g. a physical flow or frequency with direct physiological effects — and thus pervades our memories, emotions, and abilities (see Graham).

Another critical aspect of the memorable events described above – and experiences like them – resides in their sound as a manifestation of voice, which is a fundamental signal of expression. It is essential to our basic humanity, communication, and our democratic ideals. This meaningful vocal clamor offers a necessary complement to calm that we ought not and must not stifle. This basic complementarity between the “loud” and the “quiet” is a delicate balance the last years — let’s just say four — have truly tested.

The “loud,” inscrutably masked as free speech, connection, convenience, and seamlessness, has infiltrated and distorted the “quiet” hollows of our lives. There are few moments of the day where our senses, particularly our hearing, are not bombarded with sonic one-upmanship. So, while we must open our ears to hear, to listen, and to process each other’s voices amongst amply raucous falsity, we must also protect and nurture our quiet respites as we protect our most cherished people and possessions. This duality underpins this study: public domains must continue to freely allow boisterous, noisome exchange; however, so too must our private spaces allow for purposeful, sensory quiet that is accessible regardless of geographical location, climate, socioeconomic status, gender, race, or age.

This work-in-progress aims to build on the above notion and examine sensory quiet as a design aspiration from the scale of the city to the architectural detail. Analyses and case studies comprise the research framework, within which prescriptive policy and design strategies take conceptual form as the Quiet City: a utopian urban environment communicated through writing, drawing, and, hopefully, building. While all the senses will be considered along the greater arc of this research, the work here focuses on auditory quiet. Specifically, the following pages present an outline of the contemporary assault on auditory quiet, countermeasures devised to protect it, and why it is needed so dearly.

Sound Wars

Since antiquity, intellectuals and general society alike have been in constant conflict with the noise of urban environments. City noise has been continuously reinterpreted as an annoyance, a vice, and a deeper signifier of infrastructural, economic, and even moral decay (see Laurence in Betts; Boutin; Mansell). For the contemporary city dweller, the intrusion of noise into one’s daily soundscape is commonplace. Accordingly, news sources like the New York Times and the New Yorker regularly chronicle the adverse effects of noise on physical, emotional, and cognitive well-being on their local readership. To drown out the subways and the streets, for example, “sound systems are deliberately cranked up to full volume…with the goal of creating a frenzied environment.” (see Rueb) To deal with this frenzy, we are faced with a choice: ask everyone to whisper or scream a little louder. As it relates to public services, often the only viable choice is to increase the volume of announcements, alerts, alarms and other identifiers, such as emergency vehicle sirens to ensure they’ll be heard (see Aratani). The noise pollution billows, and the effects are wide-ranging.

At lower to mid-range decibel levels (50–70 decibels), prolonged exposure to city noise reduces focus and productivity during the day and may disrupt sleep cycles at night. At higher volumes (70–90 dB), the effect of over-exposure is not only deafening [sic], but anxiety inducing to the extent of increasing the incidence of heart disease (see Hammer, Swinburn, and Neitzel). While not expressly intended to harm, the sum of the city’s noisiest noise poses a clear threat to human health.

Beyond passive risk, experiments in sonic and ultrasonic devices have yielded a number of intentional weapons for use in warfare, crowd control, and espionage. Some of these devices create high-powered sonic waves, which may damage or explode the eardrum, thereby causing pain, imbalance and incapacitation. Lower powered ultrasonic waves can induce nausea and discomfort from great distances (see Goodman; Altmann). Awareness about such weapons spiked in 2017, following a “sonic attack” on the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. Since the event, debate has raged on whether a neurotoxin or a focused beam of sound — due to their similar pathologies — caused the diplomats' distress.

Sound Remedies

At this clip, it should be no surprise that noise pollution has been described as a “modern plague” (see Goines and Hagler); however, intentional quiet and other types of beneficial “noise” may actually prevent and counteract the effects of overexposure to sound as well as improve other aspects of health, and fast! Within as little as two minutes, auditory quiet positively affects blood circulation and relaxes the body more effectively than “relaxing” music (see Bernardi, Porta, and Sleight). Beyond simple quiet time, “exposure to nature sounds, when compared to urban or office noise, accelerates physiological and psychological restoration up to 37% faster after a psychological stressor and reduces cognitive fatigue and helps motivation.” (see Browning, Ryan, and Clancy).

The Japanese practice of “forest bathing” offers an interesting example of such beneficial noise exposure. “Shinrin-yoku” is a discipline and preventative medicinal technique formalized over the last three decades. Forest bathers are encouraged to leave their devices behind, follow their bodies slowly through the forest, “listen to the wind and taste the air.” Poetics aside, new studies show that “such activities may reduce blood pressure, lower cortisol levels, and improve concentration and memory” (see Li, Sherwood). While forest bathing is intended to engage all the senses (see Ackerman), sound is critical.

Quaking leaves, a trickle of water, humming cicadas, crickets, frogs and other forest creatures unite sonically as a delightfully layered and accretive soundscape, whose complexity cannot be untangled by the human brain.

Precisely because rhythms as well as discontinuities are impossible to identify or anticipate in this environment, the brain may focus inwardly, relax, and attend more closely to conscious and unconscious processes.

In this mode, city-dwellers have adopted such soundscapes into their daily lives, even when forests are out of reach. Sound machines and apps with hundreds of natural soundscape options promise improved concentration, relaxation, and sleep to users of all ages. Combine these with “noise-cancelling” headphones, and nirvana is close within reach! And this has become big business. Noise cancelling headphones alone garner over USD 1 billion in annual sales, demonstrating the substantial demand for auditory quiet by consumers (see Allied Market Research).

Home, office, and retail technologies are getting into the quiet game as well. Small-room scale sound pods, directional sound “showers”, and other sound masking devices are widely available, each tailoring soundscapes to occupant needs. Interestingly, all of these technologies rely on similar principles as the forest: addition, layering, and synthesis of sonic waveforms. Noise is not cancelled; it is subsumed by alternating, complementary waves of sound. So how can our public spaces and our cities learn from forests and adaptive technologies?

QC Code

During the 2013 NYC Reinvent the Payphone competition, my team’s submission — NYC Loop — adapted and combined sound masking technologies to form a city-wide network of “sound oases.” This improved communications functionality and offered a momentary respite from the frenzy of the city. Although never built, the conversations with telecom providers, tech companies, and municipalities stemming from the project made it apparent that cities and their smart-tech providers were keenly aware of noise pollution and actively attempting to remedy it.

Across Europe, cities maintain sound maps of roadways, railways, airports and have taken steps to limit sound emissions to 40 dB at night based on World Health Organisation (WHO) targets (see Hammer et al). In the US, the approach is a bit different. Many city ordinances establish a sound threshold relative to ambient sound levels. This is a fine idea, except in places like New York and Chicago where ambient city noise regularly reaches 70 dB and above. In more suburban areas, some municipalities have taken to paving roads with rubberized asphalt, which can reduce traffic noise by over 5 dB (see Fetterman). While seemingly minor, these incremental strategies do help improve urban soundscapes.

I leave it to Mindy Fetterman to explain the next bit. “People in poorer and racially segregated neighborhoods live with higher levels of noise than other people, according to a 2017 study led by the School of Public Health at [Berkeley]. Neighborhoods with median annual household incomes below $25,000 were nearly two decibels louder than neighborhoods with incomes above $100,000. And communities where at least 3 in 4 residents are black had median nighttime noise levels of 46.3 decibels — four decibels louder than communities with no black residents.” A 5 dB difference, then, may be where rubber meets road for underserved communities. But that’s a joke, isn’t it? We can do better. Policymakers, planners, designers, and builders need to address inequality in concert with noise pollution.

A note for designers: siting a building properly, with bedrooms facing away from major thoroughfares can reduce noise levels by up to 20 dB (see Bodin et al). And at the scale of the wall, or more importantly, the aperture (i.e. windows and doors) rigorous attention to insulation, seals, gaskets, and other stopgap measures can reduce outside to inside noise transmission (or increase the OITC rating) dramatically. In the case of Passivhaus construction, these strategies combine for vastly improved air quality, thermal comfort, and energy savings, but also purport 10 dB noise reduction when compared to traditionally framed and sealed building enclosures (see Alter). So, by simply orienting and sealing a building with meticulous detail, it is possible to reduce noise levels by 30 dB. That’s the difference between, say, an air conditioner cranking up to speed and rustling leaves in the forest.

As our world grows hotter and more inhospitable to our senses, we must actively search for overlapping, serendipitous solutions across physical and philosophical boundaries. In the Quiet City, these sorts of performance driven harmonies shall be codes. As code, standards for sensory quiet may be established to protect those who are typically under served. And while it may take boisterous, noisome exchange to situate Quiet Code within Zoning and Building Codes as well as other relevant ordinances, it is essential to protect our ears, our brains, and our bodies.

Sources

As published with the original essay, 1 October 2019.

1. Aratani, Lauren. “Which blare project: noisy New York ponders switch to gentler sirens.” The Guardian. 22 February 2019. theguardian.com
2. Rueb, Emily S. “Behind City’s Painful Din, Culprits High and Low.” The New York Times. 12 July 2013. Article · Multimedia
3. “Many Pleas for Quiet, but City Still Thunders.” The New York Times. 13 July 2013. nytimes.com
4. “To Create a Quieter City, They’re Recording the Sounds of New York.” The New York Times. 7 November 2016. nytimes.com
5. “Dear Architects: Sound Matters.” The New York Times. 29 December 2015. nytimes.com
6. “Havana’s Symphony of Sound.” The New York Times. 12 March 2018. nytimes.com
7. “Mapping New York’s Noisiest Neighborhoods.” The New Yorker. newyorker.com
8. “Another Reason to Love Passive House: It’s Really Quiet.” Treehugger. treehugger.com
9. Fetterman, Mindy. “Seeking a Quiet Place in a Nation of Noise.” Pew / Stateline. 16 April 2018. pewtrusts.org

1. Altmann, Jürgen. “Acoustic Weapons — A Prospective Assessment.” Science & Global Security. 2001; 9:165–234. PDF
2. Bernardi L, Porta C, Sleight P. “Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence.” Heart. 2006; 92:445–452. PMC1860846
3. Bodin T, Björk J, Ardö J, Albin M. “Annoyance, sleep and concentration problems due to combined traffic noise and the benefit of quiet side.” Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2015; 12(2):1612–1628. PMC4344683
4. Hammer MS, Swinburn TK, Neitzel RL. “Environmental noise pollution in the United States: developing an effective public health response.” Environmental Health Perspectives. 2014; 122:115–119. doi:10.1289/ehp.1307272

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