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>Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you.

>Suburbs are louder than cities imo because there is always a leaf blower, lawn mower, and weedwacker going at all times during the day within 100 yards of you. That's hugely hyperbolic. But in the city there really are constant sirens, car horns, diesel trucks, construction noises, roadway noise etc... The most comprehensive study done on this (admittedly a long time ago in 1970) shows a clear correlation between population density and noise pollution. https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_ne25/gtr_ne25_183.pdf https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_ne25/gtr_ne25_183.pdf I think the most likely explanation is that you moved from a particularly noisy suburban neighborhood to a particularly quiet urban one.

gonehome 5y ago
It does sound ridiculous but I’ve lived in DC, London, and SF now and all were quieter than the suburbs I’ve lived in. Mostly because of lawn stuff and garbage pickup. Also probably a factor that I’ve been in new city buildings with good insulation and not on the ground floor.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  If the insulation isn’t the same, you can’t really compare the 2. I could take a nap in an active construction site with good enough earplugs. Garbage pickup is once a week, and the truck is close enough for me to hear it for maybe 15 minutes. Double that for recycling pickup. I live a few miles from the city center, in just about the densest area where people still have lawns. There are maybe 5 houses close enough to me that I could hear a leaf blower from if I’m inside the house (loud enough to notice). Even if each one runs a lawnmower and leaf blower for half an hour each week, that’s 2.5 hours per week tops (only 2 of them actually use leaf blowers, and most only cut the grass 1x every 2 weeks). Also in most of the country mowing only happens a little more than half the year. Compare that with road noise, and sirens, which I hear far more often.
  - burntoutfire 5y ago
    > Garbage pickup is once a week, and the truck is close enough for me to hear it for maybe 15 minutes. Double that for recycling pickup. Around me, there are three different recycling pickups (one for the each kind of recyclable). Combined with regular trash pickup, it means that the garbage truck is here on most work days.
    - sarchertech 5y ago
      That's definitely not the norm in the US. A quick google search shows that less than 1/3 of US houses have access to curb side recycling at all, much less weekly recycling for extra items like glass.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Insulation is a huge factor - up north the sounds are as present but much less noticeable because the houses have to be insulated, and have double-pane windows. Down in San Diego the noises are much MORE noticeable because many houses have poor or no insulation at all, and the windows are single pane (or open).
arrosenberg 5y ago
IMO it's more that the city sounds all blend together into one harmonious cacophony, whereas in the suburbs, it's mostly quite except for that one incredibly loud, obnoxious sound. Always Sunny has a great episode about this.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  I don’t doubt that people are more likely to notice sounds in the suburbs because they aren’t habituated to them. But saying the suburbs are louder is like saying it’s actually quieter to live next to a gun range than it is to live next to the woods, because when the occasional hunter fires his gun you are more likely to notice it.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    There’s really not that much road noise in a lot of cities unless you live near a couple of particularly busy streets.
    - sarchertech 5y ago
      The study I linked showed that on average there is.
      - astura 5y ago
        Yeah, 50 years ago when there was 120 million less people in the United States and households were bigger yet had smaller houses/lots and owned a single vehicle. Power lawn equipment was more expensive back then too - most of my family used push mowers up until the 90s. # vehicle/person probably doubled since then.
  - gotaquestion 5y ago
    I lived on a 10 acre plot in the US northeast for a while, in a cozy cabin. I had the best neighbor, and old guy who owned the 200 acres mostly around me and let me hike around on it. He eventually died and some dipshit CEO of a healthcare company bought the place, logged most of it, and then gave it to his kids, a teenager and 20-something, both boys. The kids would come up all the damn time and drive their lifted trucks, quads and unmuffled motorbikes with their friends all night long, and then shoot all afternoon and night. It was way outside city limits so anything goes. Of course I tried talking to them, and they just thought I was some loser old guy trying to stop their fun, and their dad simply didn't give a fuck. There was no way the tiny police department that we shared with a neighboring town would even care. I eventually moved because they ruined my peace and quiet, and because I was getting sick of the 5' snow drifts starting in October.
quadrangle 5y ago
Cities aren't loud, cars (and trucks) are loud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 Video discusses this thoroughly. There ARE quiet cities amazingly enough. And suburbs are a HUGE source of the noise IN the cities they surround because it's the car traffic from suburbs into the cities that makes much of the noise. Cities ARE loud, but they don't HAVE to be.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  Sure, but neither do suburbs. You could mandate everyone drive electric vehicles with tires optimized for low road noise.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    Tesla going 90 km/h is almost as noisy as regular car going 90 km/h. Engine noise only dominates at low speeds.
    - eurasiantiger 5y ago
      And what is the speed limit right outside your house/apartment?
      - ajuc 5y ago
        On small roads between the blocks ("strefa zamieszkania") it's 20 km/h. Also pedestrians have right of way over cars on these roads everywhere, no matter the crossings. Usually these roads are made of bricks and have these "bumps" so you won't go much faster even if you wanted to. That's the closest road to me (like 50 meters from my flat). On regular roads it's 50 km/h. There's one like 300 meters from my flat. On a few big multilane roads it's 90 km/h or more but the closest such road is 700 meters from my flat, and it has these noise-cancelling panels around it.
        burntoutfire 5y ago
ajuc 5y ago
Cities aren't inherently louder than countryside. Car traffic is noisy, but the volume is proportional to the speed. Cars going 30 km/h aren't THAT noisy. You don't hear them through the windows. Cars going 90 km/h are VERY noisy and at that point it doesn't matter if they are electric or not - you mostly hear the tires and the aerodynamics. Using car horns at cities is forbidden anyway, unless there's a crash or a dangerous situation you shouldn't hear them. I can't remember the last time I've heard a car horn in my city. I've lived in countryside and in several places in 2 different big cities in Poland, and except for one time I lived near a big 4-lane road in the middle of the city (which is a disgrace of communist urban planning BTW) - cities were quieter than the countryside. Cars are going faster in the countryside and dogs are constantly barking at night at anything that moves. BTW another factor is windows quality. It significantly changes how quiet your home is.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  All else being equal, more people = more noise. Since all else isn’t equal, you could design cities that are quieter than the most suburbs. But you could also design suburbs that are quieter than most cities. In the US at least I linked a study that showed cities are far louder on average.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    You cannot have significantly more people/square meter with everything else remaining equal. Cities are like stars - quantitative change in density causes qualitative change in behavior. Once you have density high enough you can't live in separate houses. People move to commieblocks or other kinds of multitenant buildings. This shifts everything closer together, makes public transport profitable and having a car becomes optional. These kinds of neighborhoods are quieter than the countryside usually. It looks like this: https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecnie_3_800.jpg https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni... https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAiME/gyl2o6EGVXgI9ahveeSH7PZ9OdrlOWvvQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018.05.27.%2BLublin%252C%2BLSM%2Bz%2Bdrona-2.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAi... Or if you're insane you can mandate enough parking space that this doesn't happen and instead you have highrises in the sea of parking lots.
8note 5y ago
round me its just leaf blowers for ~4 hours everyday a few months a year Its really annoying for WFH
- brimble 5y ago
  Lawns—especially front lawns—are connected to a weirdly-large number of problems in the US, when you think about it. Noise pollution, excessive water use, more driving (all those barely-used front lawns take up a ton of space, which pushes everything farther apart by a significant distance). Fuel use and air pollution (mowing, trimming, those damn leaf blowers—though at least some of this is going electric).
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    > Lawns—especially front lawns—are connected to a weirdly-large number of problems in the US Adding to that list: The poisoning of every downstream waterway for miles. The further south you go, the worse it is.
    - brimble 5y ago
      Oh yeah, good point. And since they're manicured and sprayed with all kinds of pesticides (and lots of fertilizer, which contributes to the downstream poisoning you note) they're not even helpful for any kind of preservation of natural life. They'd like some kind of taxidermied version of a healthy natural environment. Driveways can, admittedly, be handy but you don't need a whole lawn for that. Just turn the driveway sideways and butt the whole thing up against the road. Boom, just as much parking and space for trailers or cleaning your boat or whatever, and you can cut out a few meters of lot depth with minimal loss of functionality. Of course, building codes mandate lawns, so that can't happen. Meanwhile I dream of a world where everything's ~10% closer just because we don't have suburban front lawns. I also sometimes wonder how many amazing parks we could have if half the money everyone put into maintaining their front lawns went to that, instead. Put half the money and half the land into that and we could have an awesome park on every other suburban block, and still save money and space.
lkbm 5y ago
So, I'll agree that suburbs are likely quieter than the city, but those particular items definitely vary by city and neighborhood. I live in the densest neighborhood in Austin (West Campus). Sirens are rare, and car horns are moderately uncommon. Construction noise is near-constant during the day, as are big trucks related to the construction. Car noise is ever-present, but more of a problem on the larger roads. (I'm currently sitting outside a coffee shop on Lamar and the traffic noise is indeed constant and terrible.) The two biggest sources of noise pollution in my neighborhood are 1. the construction and 2. leaf blowers. Leaf blowers might be third if you split the construction-related trucks into their own category.
astura 5y ago
I've always found cars to be much more disruptive in the suburbs because they drive so much faster in the suburbs. Cars drive by a suburban sandwich shop that I like to go to so fast that they shake windows. The speed limit on the road is 25.

gonehome 5y ago

It does sound ridiculous but I’ve lived in DC, London, and SF now and all were quieter than the suburbs I’ve lived in. Mostly because of lawn stuff and garbage pickup. Also probably a factor that I’ve been in new city buildings with good insulation and not on the ground floor.

sarchertech 5y ago
If the insulation isn’t the same, you can’t really compare the 2. I could take a nap in an active construction site with good enough earplugs. Garbage pickup is once a week, and the truck is close enough for me to hear it for maybe 15 minutes. Double that for recycling pickup. I live a few miles from the city center, in just about the densest area where people still have lawns. There are maybe 5 houses close enough to me that I could hear a leaf blower from if I’m inside the house (loud enough to notice). Even if each one runs a lawnmower and leaf blower for half an hour each week, that’s 2.5 hours per week tops (only 2 of them actually use leaf blowers, and most only cut the grass 1x every 2 weeks). Also in most of the country mowing only happens a little more than half the year. Compare that with road noise, and sirens, which I hear far more often.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  > Garbage pickup is once a week, and the truck is close enough for me to hear it for maybe 15 minutes. Double that for recycling pickup. Around me, there are three different recycling pickups (one for the each kind of recyclable). Combined with regular trash pickup, it means that the garbage truck is here on most work days.
  - sarchertech 5y ago
    That's definitely not the norm in the US. A quick google search shows that less than 1/3 of US houses have access to curb side recycling at all, much less weekly recycling for extra items like glass.
bombcar 5y ago
Insulation is a huge factor - up north the sounds are as present but much less noticeable because the houses have to be insulated, and have double-pane windows. Down in San Diego the noises are much MORE noticeable because many houses have poor or no insulation at all, and the windows are single pane (or open).

arrosenberg 5y ago

IMO it's more that the city sounds all blend together into one harmonious cacophony, whereas in the suburbs, it's mostly quite except for that one incredibly loud, obnoxious sound. Always Sunny has a great episode about this.

sarchertech 5y ago
I don’t doubt that people are more likely to notice sounds in the suburbs because they aren’t habituated to them. But saying the suburbs are louder is like saying it’s actually quieter to live next to a gun range than it is to live next to the woods, because when the occasional hunter fires his gun you are more likely to notice it.
- gonehome 5y ago
  There’s really not that much road noise in a lot of cities unless you live near a couple of particularly busy streets.
  - sarchertech 5y ago
    The study I linked showed that on average there is.
    - astura 5y ago
      Yeah, 50 years ago when there was 120 million less people in the United States and households were bigger yet had smaller houses/lots and owned a single vehicle. Power lawn equipment was more expensive back then too - most of my family used push mowers up until the 90s. # vehicle/person probably doubled since then.
- gotaquestion 5y ago
  I lived on a 10 acre plot in the US northeast for a while, in a cozy cabin. I had the best neighbor, and old guy who owned the 200 acres mostly around me and let me hike around on it. He eventually died and some dipshit CEO of a healthcare company bought the place, logged most of it, and then gave it to his kids, a teenager and 20-something, both boys. The kids would come up all the damn time and drive their lifted trucks, quads and unmuffled motorbikes with their friends all night long, and then shoot all afternoon and night. It was way outside city limits so anything goes. Of course I tried talking to them, and they just thought I was some loser old guy trying to stop their fun, and their dad simply didn't give a fuck. There was no way the tiny police department that we shared with a neighboring town would even care. I eventually moved because they ruined my peace and quiet, and because I was getting sick of the 5' snow drifts starting in October.

quadrangle 5y ago

Cities aren't loud, cars (and trucks) are loud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8 Video discusses this thoroughly. There ARE quiet cities amazingly enough. And suburbs are a HUGE source of the noise IN the cities they surround because it's the car traffic from suburbs into the cities that makes much of the noise. Cities ARE loud, but they don't HAVE to be.

sarchertech 5y ago
Sure, but neither do suburbs. You could mandate everyone drive electric vehicles with tires optimized for low road noise.
- ajuc 5y ago
  Tesla going 90 km/h is almost as noisy as regular car going 90 km/h. Engine noise only dominates at low speeds.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    And what is the speed limit right outside your house/apartment?
    - ajuc 5y ago
      On small roads between the blocks ("strefa zamieszkania") it's 20 km/h. Also pedestrians have right of way over cars on these roads everywhere, no matter the crossings. Usually these roads are made of bricks and have these "bumps" so you won't go much faster even if you wanted to. That's the closest road to me (like 50 meters from my flat). On regular roads it's 50 km/h. There's one like 300 meters from my flat. On a few big multilane roads it's 90 km/h or more but the closest such road is 700 meters from my flat, and it has these noise-cancelling panels around it.
      - burntoutfire 5y ago

ajuc 5y ago

Cities aren't inherently louder than countryside. Car traffic is noisy, but the volume is proportional to the speed. Cars going 30 km/h aren't THAT noisy. You don't hear them through the windows. Cars going 90 km/h are VERY noisy and at that point it doesn't matter if they are electric or not - you mostly hear the tires and the aerodynamics. Using car horns at cities is forbidden anyway, unless there's a crash or a dangerous situation you shouldn't hear them. I can't remember the last time I've heard a car horn in my city. I've lived in countryside and in several places in 2 different big cities in Poland, and except for one time I lived near a big 4-lane road in the middle of the city (which is a disgrace of communist urban planning BTW) - cities were quieter than the countryside. Cars are going faster in the countryside and dogs are constantly barking at night at anything that moves. BTW another factor is windows quality. It significantly changes how quiet your home is.

sarchertech 5y ago
All else being equal, more people = more noise. Since all else isn’t equal, you could design cities that are quieter than the most suburbs. But you could also design suburbs that are quieter than most cities. In the US at least I linked a study that showed cities are far louder on average.
- ajuc 5y ago
  You cannot have significantly more people/square meter with everything else remaining equal. Cities are like stars - quantitative change in density causes qualitative change in behavior. Once you have density high enough you can't live in separate houses. People move to commieblocks or other kinds of multitenant buildings. This shifts everything closer together, makes public transport profitable and having a car becomes optional. These kinds of neighborhoods are quieter than the countryside usually. It looks like this: https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecnie_3_800.jpg https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni... https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAiME/gyl2o6EGVXgI9ahveeSH7PZ9OdrlOWvvQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018.05.27.%2BLublin%252C%2BLSM%2Bz%2Bdrona-2.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAi... Or if you're insane you can mandate enough parking space that this doesn't happen and instead you have highrises in the sea of parking lots.

8note 5y ago

round me its just leaf blowers for ~4 hours everyday a few months a year Its really annoying for WFH

brimble 5y ago
Lawns—especially front lawns—are connected to a weirdly-large number of problems in the US, when you think about it. Noise pollution, excessive water use, more driving (all those barely-used front lawns take up a ton of space, which pushes everything farther apart by a significant distance). Fuel use and air pollution (mowing, trimming, those damn leaf blowers—though at least some of this is going electric).
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  > Lawns—especially front lawns—are connected to a weirdly-large number of problems in the US Adding to that list: The poisoning of every downstream waterway for miles. The further south you go, the worse it is.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Oh yeah, good point. And since they're manicured and sprayed with all kinds of pesticides (and lots of fertilizer, which contributes to the downstream poisoning you note) they're not even helpful for any kind of preservation of natural life. They'd like some kind of taxidermied version of a healthy natural environment. Driveways can, admittedly, be handy but you don't need a whole lawn for that. Just turn the driveway sideways and butt the whole thing up against the road. Boom, just as much parking and space for trailers or cleaning your boat or whatever, and you can cut out a few meters of lot depth with minimal loss of functionality. Of course, building codes mandate lawns, so that can't happen. Meanwhile I dream of a world where everything's ~10% closer just because we don't have suburban front lawns. I also sometimes wonder how many amazing parks we could have if half the money everyone put into maintaining their front lawns went to that, instead. Put half the money and half the land into that and we could have an awesome park on every other suburban block, and still save money and space.

lkbm 5y ago

So, I'll agree that suburbs are likely quieter than the city, but those particular items definitely vary by city and neighborhood. I live in the densest neighborhood in Austin (West Campus). Sirens are rare, and car horns are moderately uncommon. Construction noise is near-constant during the day, as are big trucks related to the construction. Car noise is ever-present, but more of a problem on the larger roads. (I'm currently sitting outside a coffee shop on Lamar and the traffic noise is indeed constant and terrible.) The two biggest sources of noise pollution in my neighborhood are 1. the construction and 2. leaf blowers. Leaf blowers might be third if you split the construction-related trucks into their own category.

astura 5y ago

I've always found cars to be much more disruptive in the suburbs because they drive so much faster in the suburbs. Cars drive by a suburban sandwich shop that I like to go to so fast that they shake windows. The speed limit on the road is 25.