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I live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when

I live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when you want to go for a walk and can't even hold a conversation. This didn't happen in the places where I lived back in Europe because zoning laws were different. Instead of the sprawl of freehold single family homes separate from a dense urban core, these much quieter towns had a preponderance of moderate-density areas with mixed use buildings. This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees. This moderate density also translates into frequent and fast public transit. Overall it is a much more pleasant day-to-day living experience. And it is not unique to Europe, you can get the same experience in Japan, for example. I hope we can learn from them.

outime 3y ago
Note that while you point out this happened in specific areas you've lived in, there are unfortunately plenty of places in Europe where you'd face the same issue.
darkteflon 3y ago
I see this take about Japan all the time and do not understand it. No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? Rural areas might be quiet for sheer low population density, but the cities are disgusting. PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. Every morning I see pregnant and new mothers with infants or small children squeezing between belching diesel trucks, relentless car traffic, construction sites and smokers areas and wonder what the cost of all of this will be. This is not a model for the future. It’s a relic.
- Grimburger 3y ago
  > but the cities are disgusting Which non-Japanese cities are you comparing it to here?
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    Take your pick. There’s no special magic to Japanese cities. They’re dominated by traffic and construction, full stop. The air is filthy.
    - ehnto 3y ago
      Well not all Japanese cities are the same, and it is unfair to categorize a megalopolis like Tokyo as one thing or another as it's too varied for that. While Tokyo does have no shortage of highways and cars they do have plenty of mixed zone medium density, walkable areas that are free from car noise. That is not a feature of any part of most US cities except maybe the CBD. It is also much more uncommon to find stroads in Japanese cities, while a stroad is the default for many western cities.
      - darkteflon 3y ago
        Sure, smaller cities are better than big cities. Less dense cities are better than denser cities. All else held equal. The neighbourhoods you’re referring to - walkable areas free from car noise - are open to the wealthy only. The absolute vast majority of people in Tokyo live with constant traffic noise and terrible air quality. Not to mention cramped living conditions.
        bombcar 3y ago
        It is really, really hard to compare metro areas without actually having lived there. Tourist areas are always by definition in nicer parts of the city because the tourists pay for it. And if you have enough money most cities have nice parts. But how does the “average” working stiff live?
        darkteflon 3y ago
        It definitely is difficult, thank you. It also seems to me to be of limited value unless you’re specifically trying to measure the effect of different policies. Let’s just do what we can to improve air quality everywhere. We know diesel bans work, we know EVs work, we know congestion pricing works. Let’s just do it - especially for our kids. Doesn’t seem particularly controversial to me.
- noduerme 3y ago
  > and wonder what the cost of all of this will be Likely the same extended lifespan that's been prevalent in Japan over the past century of smoking, diesel and construction (along with the occasional nuclear catastrophe). Humans are apparently more ruggedized than they look on paper.
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    And luckily, the only relevant measure of quality of life is the number of years lived, isn’t it.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      Sarcasm isn't a cost.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    You are just one sentence away from saying "human quality of life doesn't matter, we must think of the economy". Shortness of breath is something doctors report as a more and more common symptom of city dwellers. Not reported on the news because nobody -- apparently you included -- cares, but I've been to doctors lately, and they complained that the lung and heart doctors are overbooked lately while the others have a normal load.
    - kqr 3y ago
      This could also be because people don't go out as much - perhaps for fear of pollution. Generally, it takes a lot of pollution to counter the positive health effects of active commuting. It was a while since I did the research, but someone estimated that you need to cycle for more than sixteen hours per day for the pollution to outweigh the cardio benefits in the 90th percentile of cities ordered by pollution. There was no city for which any mount of cycling would have made you worse off. Granted, walking is probably slightly lower in intensity, but still.
      - pdimitar 3y ago
- rtpg 3y ago
  > PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it What are you talking about? Localities sent a smog alert, made announcements on the speaker, and there was a whole thing. It was a particularly hot day as well. I don’t have that many reference points to be fair, but almost every time I’ve checked general air quality (at least according to the first site that describes AQI) for Paris has always been worse than Tokyo. Of course things can be massively improved. There is a lot of noise pollution. But the conversations are relative to other places. My reference points are limited but on points like air pollution or smoking other major cities fare worse IMO. Though this is all super subjective, and even within a city various parts of it have a vastly different vibe.
  - kqr 3y ago
    Air quality also wildly varies between streets, so it's hard to compare blindly across cities. Walking for just a minute down a side street can massively improve air quality compared to the main street.
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    It’s been like this for days, it will continue into next week. We had no announcements where I am, none of the news broadcasts I checked (and I checked a few) mentioned it. The Tokyo metro site wouldn’t even load on my phone. Glad you got a heads up. Don’t really care what Paris is like, tbh. Shit air is shit air. Saying it’s shitter somewhere else isn’t super compelling. The whole point of my original comment was that people elevate Japanese cities in ways they don’t deserve.
    - SapporoChris 3y ago
      https://www.iqair.com/japan/tokyo https://www.iqair.com/japan/tokyo Site has Historic air quality graph for Tokyo and the daily chart shows the air quality is very good.
      - darkteflon 3y ago
        EDIT: To clarify, if you checked accuweather.com yesterday morning you would’ve seen a pollution map flooded red, AQI 142. Yep I know - but did you check how many monitoring sites they use and where they’re placed? It’s not representative of the actual experience of living here. If you’re walking, or cycling, you’re constantly in extreme close proximity to tailpipe emissions from cars and diesel trucks. The city also famously has lots of construction activity, almost always also belching diesel.
- badpun 3y ago
  > PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. According to [1], yesterday's peak of PM2.5 (not the 24 hour average) in Tokyo was at 22 µg/m3, whereas according to [2], the WHO's (extremely strict) limit for 24 hour average is set at 15 µg/m3. Where did you get your data from? [1] https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/Japan/tokyo https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/Japan/tokyo [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    accuweather.com. Yesterday morning the AQI was 142. I snapped a photo of it.
    - duckmysick 3y ago
      This is the air quality page for Tokyo on accuweather.com https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-index/226396 https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-i... Clicking on the Learn more from Plume Labs takes you to the air quality data source. https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5 https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5 You can see graphs with the tabs named Live, Week, Month, Year. We can check past data there. The weekly graph shows 72 AQI on May 18th. The yearly graph shows the annual average of 39 AQI. Can you confirm that you see the same data?
      - darkteflon 3y ago
        Is that the 24 hour average? I literally have photos on my phone from Thursday morning showing AQI 142 and a Tokyo map soaked in pink and red. I snapped them to send to my wife, who was planning to take the kids to the park. It was also obvious to anyone with a functioning noise on their face. Not sure what to tell you.
        duckmysick 3y ago
        It's the value taken at Thu 18 May 01:50PM. It's an interactive chart. The weekly version shows readings every couple minutes.
- sparsely 3y ago
  Japanese cities are a lot quieter and cleaner than most much less dense western ones (e.g. London).
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits Is it worse than SA, London or any other megacity of the world?
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Who cares? Everybody wants clean air, they just live with the bad one because the big city pays well (though when you correct it for costs of living, it gets muddier).
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Huh? You are claiming Tokyo is shit, so is there a city of conparable size that does better? Or are you just demanding something impossible?
      - darkteflon 3y ago
        What’s impossible about it? Where are the bans on diesel trucks in the city centre? Where are the zero emissions vehicles visible in just about every other metropolis? Where are the congestion charges? Bike lanes? Tree cover? This is a political problem and as long as the Japanese auto lobby has the LDP in their pocket, we who live here live the consequences.
        sokoloff 3y ago
        You’re saying other cities’ air quality experience is totally irrelevant in some posts and then making a direct comparison to policies that other cities have implemented in this post. It doesn’t seem a consistent position to me. IMO, what other cities do (and the results they get) is relevant when discussing what’s good, bad, or practically possible.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s. The country has taken some of the worst cues from the US. Many cities like Tokyo are 75% suburban, single home, it's in fact the largest suburban region on the planet. The number of cars in the country is much higher than in the rest of Asia and many cities are extraordinarily sprawlish. From the air Tokyo literally just looks like a sort of denser LA (https://i.redd.it/mghcpc5xvt761.jpg https://i.redd.it/mghcpc5xvt761.jpg) If people are looking inspiration in Asia, Singapore is a much better place to look at, it deliberately designed around green spaces and avoidance of cars.
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    >> No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? > As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s. Yes, I have visited Japan several times, multiple cities. My wife is Japanese. But don't let that stop you. Please, continue.
    - darkteflon 3y ago
      Okay, well, more than 20 years living here and I reckon the air quality is terrible and that in 2023 it should be a much higher priority than it is. I have to raise my kids here. I’m sure the total absence of zero emissions vehicle options has absolutely nothing to do with the political influence of the Japanese automotive lobby.
      - david-gpu 3y ago
        Somebody else in the thread showed you actual objective data on air pollution and you brushed it off. In Japan a substantial majority of people commute by transit, mostly by rail. How would air pollution be affected if as many people commuted by car as they typically do in North America? Cars are the subject of this post.
- po 3y ago
  I just walked out onto my 3rd floor balcony in Tokyo at 8:30pm and my watch says it is 38dB. I can hear some light car traffic in the distance. I live about a 20 minute walk to Shibuya crossing, so not exactly rural. I also live about 100m from Yamatedori which is a giant arterial road. I used to live in NYC. Tokyo is a very quiet city. Not all parts for sure... you can have an apartment by a train crossing or they might build a highway outside your 6th floor window, but I would say that most of the parts where people live is pretty quiet.
  - ATMLOTTOBEER 3y ago
    This was my experience as well visiting Tokyo as someone who lives in nyc
  - DrBazza 3y ago
    Are there trees and soft planting at street level? NYC is very plant bare by comparison to London for example. And they absorb a lot of the noise. Hard surfaces just reflect and amplify the noise.
    - po 3y ago
      Yes. Tokyo has a lot of shrubs and small trees planted on any available median or unused sidewalk space throughout the city. I think that helps. There is also some small effort put in to plant ivy or other climbing plants on things like highway ramps.
- johnwalkr 3y ago
  This is a hilariously misleading take. Are you comparing Tokyo to a place with stroads or to living on a farm? I lived in Tokyo for 6 years. Yeah there’s a lot of traffic in Tokyo but the highways are underground or elevated and it’s a pedestrian paradise At least that mother and children can walk to interesting things instead of drive everywhere. And in the neighborhood they live in, there are likely quiet streets and a grocery store within blocks. Even where there are large roads, like near Shibuya station, there’s no street parking and cars are passing through, not driving across the sidewalk to every storefront. Pedestrians definitely come first. The parkades are often attended to direct traffic and pedestrians. I can’t comment on yesterday but PM2.5 levels are often on the news. Construction sites? Yeah, it’s a city. But most construction is fast. I now live in a small But growing European city and part of the sidewalk downtown has been closed down for three years for ongoing demolition of a building. Now it looks like construction is just starting. And this is for a 5 or 6 stores building. Smoking areas outside of stations are gross in Japan but it’s rude or forbidden to smoke in crowded areas. In Europe people smoke on the train platform, at the bus stop and right outside of every restaurant. I did think of one thing that is loud and annoying in Tokyo though: 50cc scooters. Making those quiet ought to be low hanging fruit.
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    It’s not misleading at all. The best part of Tokyo’s urban design are its mixed-used neighbourhoods and extensive public transport network. As you say, that makes it great for walking and cycling. In theory. In practice, when combined with the high density, it means that people are spending a lot of time outside, unprotected, in very close proximity to the tailpipe emissions from large volumes (often 4 or 6-lanes) of gasoline and diesel-burning trucks and cars. Often with narrow sidewalks or no sidewalks at all. They shop along the main road, their kids’ school is on the main road, their workplaces, gyms, dry cleaners, station, etc. Lol at the people in this thread chiming in from their 3rd floor balconies in Moto-Azabu Hills. The absolute vast majority of people living in Tokyo are breathing trash air day in day out. It’s reprehensible. They need to ban diesel trucks immediately, and they need to actively encourage people to switch to EVs.
    - 3y ago
- fomine3 3y ago
  As you can see, PM2.5 (and sands) are coming from China. If most of them are locally generated, it should be stable so people don't need forecast. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/taiki/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/taiki/ https://tenki.jp/pm25/ https://tenki.jp/pm25/ https://tenki.jp/forecaster/t_yoshida/2023/05/20/23296.html https://tenki.jp/forecaster/t_yoshida/2023/05/20/23296.html
robertlagrant 3y ago
> This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop This is less common than you think. There are 8500 or so malls in Europe[0]. I happen to live near an (expensive) shop, which I use because I like walking places, but I also know I have a tech salary that lets me buy a place that's in walking distance of a shop, and afford to shop in it regularly. Also, plenty of people don't live near where they work. Not very hot take: while for any new cities it's a good idea to try and take emissions into account, the best driver for lower emissions and more convenience isn't large-scale city planning. It's Zoom. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/11-biggest-malls-europe-232713328.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/11-biggest-malls-europe-23271...
- Gwypaas 3y ago
  Why would I ever go to mall? It is an awful experience. At most, when it would be too cumbersome to bring on public transport, I rent a car.
  - bena 3y ago
    Not a "shopping mall" mall, but an old-school open area with shops and restaurants. I don't know if you watch Ted Lasso, but Lasso and Beard live right next to a mall and frequently walk through it or meet up at a bench there.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      We don’t build old school open areas with shops and restaurants that you can walk to!!
    - throw0101c 3y ago
      > […] but an old-school open area with shops and restaurants. Which was the original idea for them: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_mall#Downtown_pedestrian_malls_and_use_of_term_mall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_mall#Downtown_pedestr... But then car-centric urban design happened.
    - 3y ago
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees. it would take more than changing zoning laws for that, as I understand changing jobs and such is not as common in these locations as well. If you are changing jobs every couple of years having to find a home in the same neighborhood as your new job may be a challenge. Also I prefer not be limited in my shopping choices just to the single shop that happens to be in my building or on my block...
- david-gpu 3y ago
  > Also I prefer not be limited in my shopping choices just to the single shop that happens to be in my building or on my block... And I prefer not living with constant traffic noise and at risk of being run over every time I step outside. I prefer biking with my kid to his school, but we can't because the traffic makes it a suicidal idea. I also prefer to listen to birds when I walk to the shops nearby, but the traffic noise drowns them. Yet, here we are.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    Yes here we are, Here we are were the majority have self selected to live in the way I prefer, but people want to use government violence (i.e regulation) to force people to live in a manner they did not self select. I have no problems if people want to create something voluntarily that is walkable, I have massive problems with using government to do it.
    - elieri 3y ago
      Is it not equal "government violence," then, to make illegal buildings without a certain number of parking spaces attached, or that take up more than a certain percentage of the lot area, or have more than a certain number of units, or would add a café or corner store to a residential zone? Your preferred development patterns are the government-enforced ones, currently.
epolanski 3y ago
Say what you want about soviet city planning but it was damn efficient. I have never ever seen a soviet-era suburb which didn't have 4 to 12 story buildings with parks and aisles all around them and all kind of services being at a 5 minutes walking distance top (church, shops, post office, elementary and middle school, etc).[1] Literally under every building you would find people quietly enjoying their evening on the benches while watching their kids play all around in safety and green. All of those neighborhoods would be perfectly connected with city centers by public transport. Can't think of any of those places where from suburbs to downtown would take you more than 15/25 minutes top. You could literally fit tens and tens of thousands of people in relatively small but very livable neighborhoods. But cars have long ruined these kind of neighborhoods by reclaiming those places for parkings [2] (imagery is from 2017, in 2023 it is at least twice as dense in cars). People don't really enjoy their evenings chatting to each other because benches have been removed and kid playgrounds have been moved blocks away and everyone is sitting in their bunkers, uhm, homes, isolated from each other. Maybe I might be romanticizing but honestly economical progress is such an overblown metric and progress does nothing but make people more and more lonely, anti social and unhappy. It was miles better when I was a kid in Poland. [1] https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/urban-area-style-soviet-period-sleeping-dormitory-old-mass-building-sunny-summer-day-bird-s-eye-view-43443898.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/urban-area-style-soviet-peri... [2]https://www.google.it/maps/place/Osiedle+Kopernika/@49.816121,19.0145389,3a,75y,245.61h,73.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swEplCmMSt3egUFL5Mp0dUA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m9!3m8!1s0x4716a1ca18320d9b:0x7d8c9b1c021bd863!8m2!3d49.8171137!4d19.01428!10e5!14m1!1BCgIgARICCAI!16s%2Fg%2F122bg4lx https://www.google.it/maps/place/Osiedle+Kopernika/@49.81612...
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Anyone who says “things didn’t changed, it’s just nostalgia” needs to get rid of all the screens which stand in the way of them seeing the real world, at least for a while.
- prottog 3y ago
  Economical progress is certainly no guarantee of happiness, and hardships do often foster a sense of camaraderie that brings people closer together. Soldiers who have been in combat, for example, find that they miss the foxhole, even though getting shot at is no one's idea of a happy time. > People don't really enjoy their evenings chatting to each other because benches have been removed and kid playgrounds have been moved blocks away and everyone is sitting in their bunkers There's nothing about economic growth and material wealth that requires this to happen. Something else must have changed. > It was miles better when I was a kid in Poland. Most things are better as a kid, without the worries of adulthood, let alone parenthood. I'd imagine the outlook for your parents raising you in the People's Republic may have been different.
soco 3y ago
You can get noise pretty much everywhere, and can also get used to it. I lived once in a basement level with old tram lines in front of the house and it was like in those slapstick movies - the glass of water would fall off your bed stand. Yet you got used to it, although I couldn't call it "healthy".
cogogo 3y ago
Europe is definitely not a monolith with regards to noise. Loudest place I’ve ever lived is Barcelona. Was a one-way side street but the scooter noise was still insane. Cars make a lot of noise but at least in my city-living experience across both Europe and US people at bar closing times, parties, construction, scooters and motorcycles are far worse for noise affecting quality of life. Also remembering what it was like to live next to the L in Chicago forever ago… that was loud.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  Cars have more trouble going fast through narrow streets, so they go slower. Motorcycles and scooters in the city tends to have small engines for fuel economy and price, so they have to run at much higher RPMs compared to cars for the same speed. They also have much less ability to dampen the sound because the exhaust system can only be so long. Then there are people who purposely put loud pipes on. They are better space and efficiency wise, but in terms of low speed noise they sure are worse. Two wheeled vehicles don't tend to encourage the kind of space waste in north american suburbia though, so I think they are still preferable.
  - mcv 3y ago
    What's really helping is that scooters/mopeds are increasingly electric, and some of the people that used to ride noisy scooters now ride e-bikes. The sooner we get rid of those fuming noise buckets, the better.
    - l72 3y ago
      I was surprised in how much Beijing changed from 2010 to 2020. In 2010 it was loud scooters every where, and by 2020, it was a majority of electric scooters / e-bikes, which has made a big different in some parts of the city.
throwaway049 3y ago
Not very helpful to generalise about Europe in that way. It is a big place with a variety of zoning laws and plenty of examples of road, rail and air transport noise affecting homes.
mcv 3y ago
And when roads are noisy, they get noise screens to contain it. While Dutch highways tend to have speed limits of 100-130 kph, the A-10 ring highway around Amsterdam has one section that's limited to 80 kph because it passed through a densely populated area of the city. There's big apartment blocks right next to the highway (and one offramp passes straight through a building), so traffic has to go slower to keep noise levels down. If the US doesn't even do that, I think that tells you something about how much cars are prioritised over people.
- STM32F030R8 3y ago
  We often put up noise barriers around highways in the US. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
  - mcv 3y ago
    That sounds like what I was talking about. If the US does have them, that's great. But a lot of videos of the US that I've seen showed big roads through residential areas with no noise barriers around them. And with people here complaining about the noise, it's clearly not being used enough in all parts of the US. Although of course noise barriers are just one of many tools. Less cars and having cars drive more slowly probably accomplish a lot more.
    - STM32F030R8 3y ago
      Noise barriers aren’t a ‘US’ thing. It would be up to the local state or county or city to build them so your results may vary. If you catch yourself saying ‘the US does this or that’ then reconsider the question bc the US doesn’t ‘do’ anything one way or another. It’s a collection of 50 states and thousands of localities.
      - mcv 3y ago
        That's why I said "if". I have no idea what the US does or doesn't do, I trust the people who post here to inform me about that.
fatnoah 3y ago
I lived on the 36th floor of a residential in a mixed-use area. Traffic noise was a low background sound, but the HVAC and mechanical systems of nearby office buildings were astonishingly loud.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
What this tells me is that the internal combustion engine is a bad idea everywhere but especially in a dense urban core. People like both the dense urban core and the suburb single family home life style. They are very different modes of life. A lot of Europeans I know really like one or the other because they don’t really get them back home. The solution to road noise doesn’t have to be a dramatic rezoning and a reversion to Europe everywhere. It could be to make cars and trucks quieter. (N.b., I’m specifically not addressing SFH and housing shortages in this, hopefully that’s for a different thread)
- typest 3y ago
  A city on its own generally has the power to change zoning and land use laws. There are limitations (some states give cities more or less power here) but generally cities do have the ability to make changes that would reduce noise and improve quality of life for their residents. On the other hand, cities do not have the ability to redesign cars. A city can’t just choose to invent a quieter car! I would love it if we can engineer cars and trucks to be quieter; I think though that a more feasible path for any city is to work on zoning and land use changes.
- Xylakant 3y ago
  > What this tells me is that the internal combustion engine is a bad idea everywhere but especially in a dense urban core. Engine noise only dominates up to roughly 20mph, at higher speeds the tire noise is the dominating component until roughly 100mph where wind becomes the dominant. So this: > The solution to road noise doesn’t have to be a dramatic rezoning and a reversion to Europe everywhere. It could be to make cars and trucks quieter. Would mean both switching to electric cars and reducing speeds significantly to less than 20mph.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    This is about the urban core. Speed in the urban core in every US city I know is 20.
    - 3y ago
lost_tourist 3y ago
this is why EV's can't come soon enough, I live near a street and tire sound is pretty loud but it's the Harleys, oversized pickups, and fart can compacts that took some getting used to.
pandaman 3y ago
>This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees. So they have quiet bars were people quietly get wasted and quietly walk home? Quiet trucks quietly unloading goods for the shops every morning? Quiet dumpster trucks quietly picking up commercial dumpsters and quietly flipping them over every night? If we had these in the US I'd be fine with mixed zoning too. As of now I don't hear any noise from the two lane arterial street behind my backyard but I used to live in an apartment with a window roughly 500' away from a small bar (just a local watering hole in a strip mall, completely inside, not trendy at all) in a direct line of sight and I had to sleep with a white noise machine because of all the screaming the patrons produced walking out (or in?).

outime 3y ago

Note that while you point out this happened in specific areas you've lived in, there are unfortunately plenty of places in Europe where you'd face the same issue.

darkteflon 3y ago

I see this take about Japan all the time and do not understand it. No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? Rural areas might be quiet for sheer low population density, but the cities are disgusting. PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. Every morning I see pregnant and new mothers with infants or small children squeezing between belching diesel trucks, relentless car traffic, construction sites and smokers areas and wonder what the cost of all of this will be. This is not a model for the future. It’s a relic.

Grimburger 3y ago
> but the cities are disgusting Which non-Japanese cities are you comparing it to here?
- darkteflon 3y ago
  Take your pick. There’s no special magic to Japanese cities. They’re dominated by traffic and construction, full stop. The air is filthy.
  - ehnto 3y ago
    Well not all Japanese cities are the same, and it is unfair to categorize a megalopolis like Tokyo as one thing or another as it's too varied for that. While Tokyo does have no shortage of highways and cars they do have plenty of mixed zone medium density, walkable areas that are free from car noise. That is not a feature of any part of most US cities except maybe the CBD. It is also much more uncommon to find stroads in Japanese cities, while a stroad is the default for many western cities.
    - darkteflon 3y ago
      Sure, smaller cities are better than big cities. Less dense cities are better than denser cities. All else held equal. The neighbourhoods you’re referring to - walkable areas free from car noise - are open to the wealthy only. The absolute vast majority of people in Tokyo live with constant traffic noise and terrible air quality. Not to mention cramped living conditions.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        It is really, really hard to compare metro areas without actually having lived there. Tourist areas are always by definition in nicer parts of the city because the tourists pay for it. And if you have enough money most cities have nice parts. But how does the “average” working stiff live?
        darkteflon 3y ago
        It definitely is difficult, thank you. It also seems to me to be of limited value unless you’re specifically trying to measure the effect of different policies. Let’s just do what we can to improve air quality everywhere. We know diesel bans work, we know EVs work, we know congestion pricing works. Let’s just do it - especially for our kids. Doesn’t seem particularly controversial to me.
noduerme 3y ago
> and wonder what the cost of all of this will be Likely the same extended lifespan that's been prevalent in Japan over the past century of smoking, diesel and construction (along with the occasional nuclear catastrophe). Humans are apparently more ruggedized than they look on paper.
- darkteflon 3y ago
  And luckily, the only relevant measure of quality of life is the number of years lived, isn’t it.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Sarcasm isn't a cost.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  You are just one sentence away from saying "human quality of life doesn't matter, we must think of the economy". Shortness of breath is something doctors report as a more and more common symptom of city dwellers. Not reported on the news because nobody -- apparently you included -- cares, but I've been to doctors lately, and they complained that the lung and heart doctors are overbooked lately while the others have a normal load.
  - kqr 3y ago
    This could also be because people don't go out as much - perhaps for fear of pollution. Generally, it takes a lot of pollution to counter the positive health effects of active commuting. It was a while since I did the research, but someone estimated that you need to cycle for more than sixteen hours per day for the pollution to outweigh the cardio benefits in the 90th percentile of cities ordered by pollution. There was no city for which any mount of cycling would have made you worse off. Granted, walking is probably slightly lower in intensity, but still.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
rtpg 3y ago
> PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it What are you talking about? Localities sent a smog alert, made announcements on the speaker, and there was a whole thing. It was a particularly hot day as well. I don’t have that many reference points to be fair, but almost every time I’ve checked general air quality (at least according to the first site that describes AQI) for Paris has always been worse than Tokyo. Of course things can be massively improved. There is a lot of noise pollution. But the conversations are relative to other places. My reference points are limited but on points like air pollution or smoking other major cities fare worse IMO. Though this is all super subjective, and even within a city various parts of it have a vastly different vibe.
- kqr 3y ago
  Air quality also wildly varies between streets, so it's hard to compare blindly across cities. Walking for just a minute down a side street can massively improve air quality compared to the main street.
- darkteflon 3y ago
  It’s been like this for days, it will continue into next week. We had no announcements where I am, none of the news broadcasts I checked (and I checked a few) mentioned it. The Tokyo metro site wouldn’t even load on my phone. Glad you got a heads up. Don’t really care what Paris is like, tbh. Shit air is shit air. Saying it’s shitter somewhere else isn’t super compelling. The whole point of my original comment was that people elevate Japanese cities in ways they don’t deserve.
  - SapporoChris 3y ago
    https://www.iqair.com/japan/tokyo https://www.iqair.com/japan/tokyo Site has Historic air quality graph for Tokyo and the daily chart shows the air quality is very good.
    - darkteflon 3y ago
      EDIT: To clarify, if you checked accuweather.com yesterday morning you would’ve seen a pollution map flooded red, AQI 142. Yep I know - but did you check how many monitoring sites they use and where they’re placed? It’s not representative of the actual experience of living here. If you’re walking, or cycling, you’re constantly in extreme close proximity to tailpipe emissions from cars and diesel trucks. The city also famously has lots of construction activity, almost always also belching diesel.
badpun 3y ago
> PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. According to [1], yesterday's peak of PM2.5 (not the 24 hour average) in Tokyo was at 22 µg/m3, whereas according to [2], the WHO's (extremely strict) limit for 24 hour average is set at 15 µg/m3. Where did you get your data from? [1] https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/Japan/tokyo https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/Japan/tokyo [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
- darkteflon 3y ago
  accuweather.com. Yesterday morning the AQI was 142. I snapped a photo of it.
  - duckmysick 3y ago
    This is the air quality page for Tokyo on accuweather.com https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-index/226396 https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-i... Clicking on the Learn more from Plume Labs takes you to the air quality data source. https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5 https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5 You can see graphs with the tabs named Live, Week, Month, Year. We can check past data there. The weekly graph shows 72 AQI on May 18th. The yearly graph shows the annual average of 39 AQI. Can you confirm that you see the same data?
    - darkteflon 3y ago
      Is that the 24 hour average? I literally have photos on my phone from Thursday morning showing AQI 142 and a Tokyo map soaked in pink and red. I snapped them to send to my wife, who was planning to take the kids to the park. It was also obvious to anyone with a functioning noise on their face. Not sure what to tell you.
      - duckmysick 3y ago
        It's the value taken at Thu 18 May 01:50PM. It's an interactive chart. The weekly version shows readings every couple minutes.
sparsely 3y ago
Japanese cities are a lot quieter and cleaner than most much less dense western ones (e.g. London).
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits Is it worse than SA, London or any other megacity of the world?
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Who cares? Everybody wants clean air, they just live with the bad one because the big city pays well (though when you correct it for costs of living, it gets muddier).
- darkteflon 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Huh? You are claiming Tokyo is shit, so is there a city of conparable size that does better? Or are you just demanding something impossible?
    - darkteflon 3y ago
      What’s impossible about it? Where are the bans on diesel trucks in the city centre? Where are the zero emissions vehicles visible in just about every other metropolis? Where are the congestion charges? Bike lanes? Tree cover? This is a political problem and as long as the Japanese auto lobby has the LDP in their pocket, we who live here live the consequences.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        You’re saying other cities’ air quality experience is totally irrelevant in some posts and then making a direct comparison to policies that other cities have implemented in this post. It doesn’t seem a consistent position to me. IMO, what other cities do (and the results they get) is relevant when discussing what’s good, bad, or practically possible.
Barrin92 3y ago
>No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s. The country has taken some of the worst cues from the US. Many cities like Tokyo are 75% suburban, single home, it's in fact the largest suburban region on the planet. The number of cars in the country is much higher than in the rest of Asia and many cities are extraordinarily sprawlish. From the air Tokyo literally just looks like a sort of denser LA (https://i.redd.it/mghcpc5xvt761.jpg https://i.redd.it/mghcpc5xvt761.jpg) If people are looking inspiration in Asia, Singapore is a much better place to look at, it deliberately designed around green spaces and avoidance of cars.
- david-gpu 3y ago
  >> No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? > As someone who moved to Japan it's always funny. I think people literally get their impression from Japan solely from neo-Tokyo sci-fi from the 80s. Yes, I have visited Japan several times, multiple cities. My wife is Japanese. But don't let that stop you. Please, continue.
  - darkteflon 3y ago
    Okay, well, more than 20 years living here and I reckon the air quality is terrible and that in 2023 it should be a much higher priority than it is. I have to raise my kids here. I’m sure the total absence of zero emissions vehicle options has absolutely nothing to do with the political influence of the Japanese automotive lobby.
    - david-gpu 3y ago
      Somebody else in the thread showed you actual objective data on air pollution and you brushed it off. In Japan a substantial majority of people commute by transit, mostly by rail. How would air pollution be affected if as many people commuted by car as they typically do in North America? Cars are the subject of this post.
po 3y ago
I just walked out onto my 3rd floor balcony in Tokyo at 8:30pm and my watch says it is 38dB. I can hear some light car traffic in the distance. I live about a 20 minute walk to Shibuya crossing, so not exactly rural. I also live about 100m from Yamatedori which is a giant arterial road. I used to live in NYC. Tokyo is a very quiet city. Not all parts for sure... you can have an apartment by a train crossing or they might build a highway outside your 6th floor window, but I would say that most of the parts where people live is pretty quiet.
- ATMLOTTOBEER 3y ago
  This was my experience as well visiting Tokyo as someone who lives in nyc
- DrBazza 3y ago
  Are there trees and soft planting at street level? NYC is very plant bare by comparison to London for example. And they absorb a lot of the noise. Hard surfaces just reflect and amplify the noise.
  - po 3y ago
    Yes. Tokyo has a lot of shrubs and small trees planted on any available median or unused sidewalk space throughout the city. I think that helps. There is also some small effort put in to plant ivy or other climbing plants on things like highway ramps.
johnwalkr 3y ago
This is a hilariously misleading take. Are you comparing Tokyo to a place with stroads or to living on a farm? I lived in Tokyo for 6 years. Yeah there’s a lot of traffic in Tokyo but the highways are underground or elevated and it’s a pedestrian paradise At least that mother and children can walk to interesting things instead of drive everywhere. And in the neighborhood they live in, there are likely quiet streets and a grocery store within blocks. Even where there are large roads, like near Shibuya station, there’s no street parking and cars are passing through, not driving across the sidewalk to every storefront. Pedestrians definitely come first. The parkades are often attended to direct traffic and pedestrians. I can’t comment on yesterday but PM2.5 levels are often on the news. Construction sites? Yeah, it’s a city. But most construction is fast. I now live in a small But growing European city and part of the sidewalk downtown has been closed down for three years for ongoing demolition of a building. Now it looks like construction is just starting. And this is for a 5 or 6 stores building. Smoking areas outside of stations are gross in Japan but it’s rude or forbidden to smoke in crowded areas. In Europe people smoke on the train platform, at the bus stop and right outside of every restaurant. I did think of one thing that is loud and annoying in Tokyo though: 50cc scooters. Making those quiet ought to be low hanging fruit.
- darkteflon 3y ago
  It’s not misleading at all. The best part of Tokyo’s urban design are its mixed-used neighbourhoods and extensive public transport network. As you say, that makes it great for walking and cycling. In theory. In practice, when combined with the high density, it means that people are spending a lot of time outside, unprotected, in very close proximity to the tailpipe emissions from large volumes (often 4 or 6-lanes) of gasoline and diesel-burning trucks and cars. Often with narrow sidewalks or no sidewalks at all. They shop along the main road, their kids’ school is on the main road, their workplaces, gyms, dry cleaners, station, etc. Lol at the people in this thread chiming in from their 3rd floor balconies in Moto-Azabu Hills. The absolute vast majority of people living in Tokyo are breathing trash air day in day out. It’s reprehensible. They need to ban diesel trucks immediately, and they need to actively encourage people to switch to EVs.
  - 3y ago
fomine3 3y ago
As you can see, PM2.5 (and sands) are coming from China. If most of them are locally generated, it should be stable so people don't need forecast. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/taiki/ https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/taiki/ https://tenki.jp/pm25/ https://tenki.jp/pm25/ https://tenki.jp/forecaster/t_yoshida/2023/05/20/23296.html https://tenki.jp/forecaster/t_yoshida/2023/05/20/23296.html

robertlagrant 3y ago

> This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop This is less common than you think. There are 8500 or so malls in Europe[0]. I happen to live near an (expensive) shop, which I use because I like walking places, but I also know I have a tech salary that lets me buy a place that's in walking distance of a shop, and afford to shop in it regularly. Also, plenty of people don't live near where they work. Not very hot take: while for any new cities it's a good idea to try and take emissions into account, the best driver for lower emissions and more convenience isn't large-scale city planning. It's Zoom. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/11-biggest-malls-europe-232713328.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/11-biggest-malls-europe-23271...

Gwypaas 3y ago
Why would I ever go to mall? It is an awful experience. At most, when it would be too cumbersome to bring on public transport, I rent a car.
- bena 3y ago
  Not a "shopping mall" mall, but an old-school open area with shops and restaurants. I don't know if you watch Ted Lasso, but Lasso and Beard live right next to a mall and frequently walk through it or meet up at a bench there.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    We don’t build old school open areas with shops and restaurants that you can walk to!!
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    > […] but an old-school open area with shops and restaurants. Which was the original idea for them: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_mall#Downtown_pedestrian_malls_and_use_of_term_mall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_mall#Downtown_pedestr... But then car-centric urban design happened.
  - 3y ago

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees. it would take more than changing zoning laws for that, as I understand changing jobs and such is not as common in these locations as well. If you are changing jobs every couple of years having to find a home in the same neighborhood as your new job may be a challenge. Also I prefer not be limited in my shopping choices just to the single shop that happens to be in my building or on my block...

david-gpu 3y ago
> Also I prefer not be limited in my shopping choices just to the single shop that happens to be in my building or on my block... And I prefer not living with constant traffic noise and at risk of being run over every time I step outside. I prefer biking with my kid to his school, but we can't because the traffic makes it a suicidal idea. I also prefer to listen to birds when I walk to the shops nearby, but the traffic noise drowns them. Yet, here we are.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Yes here we are, Here we are were the majority have self selected to live in the way I prefer, but people want to use government violence (i.e regulation) to force people to live in a manner they did not self select. I have no problems if people want to create something voluntarily that is walkable, I have massive problems with using government to do it.
  - elieri 3y ago
    Is it not equal "government violence," then, to make illegal buildings without a certain number of parking spaces attached, or that take up more than a certain percentage of the lot area, or have more than a certain number of units, or would add a café or corner store to a residential zone? Your preferred development patterns are the government-enforced ones, currently.

epolanski 3y ago

Say what you want about soviet city planning but it was damn efficient. I have never ever seen a soviet-era suburb which didn't have 4 to 12 story buildings with parks and aisles all around them and all kind of services being at a 5 minutes walking distance top (church, shops, post office, elementary and middle school, etc).[1] Literally under every building you would find people quietly enjoying their evening on the benches while watching their kids play all around in safety and green. All of those neighborhoods would be perfectly connected with city centers by public transport. Can't think of any of those places where from suburbs to downtown would take you more than 15/25 minutes top. You could literally fit tens and tens of thousands of people in relatively small but very livable neighborhoods. But cars have long ruined these kind of neighborhoods by reclaiming those places for parkings [2] (imagery is from 2017, in 2023 it is at least twice as dense in cars). People don't really enjoy their evenings chatting to each other because benches have been removed and kid playgrounds have been moved blocks away and everyone is sitting in their bunkers, uhm, homes, isolated from each other. Maybe I might be romanticizing but honestly economical progress is such an overblown metric and progress does nothing but make people more and more lonely, anti social and unhappy. It was miles better when I was a kid in Poland. [1] https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/urban-area-style-soviet-period-sleeping-dormitory-old-mass-building-sunny-summer-day-bird-s-eye-view-43443898.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/urban-area-style-soviet-peri... [2]https://www.google.it/maps/place/Osiedle+Kopernika/@49.816121,19.0145389,3a,75y,245.61h,73.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swEplCmMSt3egUFL5Mp0dUA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m9!3m8!1s0x4716a1ca18320d9b:0x7d8c9b1c021bd863!8m2!3d49.8171137!4d19.01428!10e5!14m1!1BCgIgARICCAI!16s%2Fg%2F122bg4lx https://www.google.it/maps/place/Osiedle+Kopernika/@49.81612...

Aerbil313 3y ago
Anyone who says “things didn’t changed, it’s just nostalgia” needs to get rid of all the screens which stand in the way of them seeing the real world, at least for a while.
prottog 3y ago
Economical progress is certainly no guarantee of happiness, and hardships do often foster a sense of camaraderie that brings people closer together. Soldiers who have been in combat, for example, find that they miss the foxhole, even though getting shot at is no one's idea of a happy time. > People don't really enjoy their evenings chatting to each other because benches have been removed and kid playgrounds have been moved blocks away and everyone is sitting in their bunkers There's nothing about economic growth and material wealth that requires this to happen. Something else must have changed. > It was miles better when I was a kid in Poland. Most things are better as a kid, without the worries of adulthood, let alone parenthood. I'd imagine the outlook for your parents raising you in the People's Republic may have been different.

soco 3y ago

You can get noise pretty much everywhere, and can also get used to it. I lived once in a basement level with old tram lines in front of the house and it was like in those slapstick movies - the glass of water would fall off your bed stand. Yet you got used to it, although I couldn't call it "healthy".

cogogo 3y ago

Europe is definitely not a monolith with regards to noise. Loudest place I’ve ever lived is Barcelona. Was a one-way side street but the scooter noise was still insane. Cars make a lot of noise but at least in my city-living experience across both Europe and US people at bar closing times, parties, construction, scooters and motorcycles are far worse for noise affecting quality of life. Also remembering what it was like to live next to the L in Chicago forever ago… that was loud.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
Cars have more trouble going fast through narrow streets, so they go slower. Motorcycles and scooters in the city tends to have small engines for fuel economy and price, so they have to run at much higher RPMs compared to cars for the same speed. They also have much less ability to dampen the sound because the exhaust system can only be so long. Then there are people who purposely put loud pipes on. They are better space and efficiency wise, but in terms of low speed noise they sure are worse. Two wheeled vehicles don't tend to encourage the kind of space waste in north american suburbia though, so I think they are still preferable.
- mcv 3y ago
  What's really helping is that scooters/mopeds are increasingly electric, and some of the people that used to ride noisy scooters now ride e-bikes. The sooner we get rid of those fuming noise buckets, the better.
  - l72 3y ago
    I was surprised in how much Beijing changed from 2010 to 2020. In 2010 it was loud scooters every where, and by 2020, it was a majority of electric scooters / e-bikes, which has made a big different in some parts of the city.

throwaway049 3y ago

Not very helpful to generalise about Europe in that way. It is a big place with a variety of zoning laws and plenty of examples of road, rail and air transport noise affecting homes.

mcv 3y ago

And when roads are noisy, they get noise screens to contain it. While Dutch highways tend to have speed limits of 100-130 kph, the A-10 ring highway around Amsterdam has one section that's limited to 80 kph because it passed through a densely populated area of the city. There's big apartment blocks right next to the highway (and one offramp passes straight through a building), so traffic has to go slower to keep noise levels down. If the US doesn't even do that, I think that tells you something about how much cars are prioritised over people.

STM32F030R8 3y ago
We often put up noise barriers around highways in the US. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
- mcv 3y ago
  That sounds like what I was talking about. If the US does have them, that's great. But a lot of videos of the US that I've seen showed big roads through residential areas with no noise barriers around them. And with people here complaining about the noise, it's clearly not being used enough in all parts of the US. Although of course noise barriers are just one of many tools. Less cars and having cars drive more slowly probably accomplish a lot more.
  - STM32F030R8 3y ago
    Noise barriers aren’t a ‘US’ thing. It would be up to the local state or county or city to build them so your results may vary. If you catch yourself saying ‘the US does this or that’ then reconsider the question bc the US doesn’t ‘do’ anything one way or another. It’s a collection of 50 states and thousands of localities.
    - mcv 3y ago
      That's why I said "if". I have no idea what the US does or doesn't do, I trust the people who post here to inform me about that.

fatnoah 3y ago

I lived on the 36th floor of a residential in a mixed-use area. Traffic noise was a low background sound, but the HVAC and mechanical systems of nearby office buildings were astonishingly loud.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

What this tells me is that the internal combustion engine is a bad idea everywhere but especially in a dense urban core. People like both the dense urban core and the suburb single family home life style. They are very different modes of life. A lot of Europeans I know really like one or the other because they don’t really get them back home. The solution to road noise doesn’t have to be a dramatic rezoning and a reversion to Europe everywhere. It could be to make cars and trucks quieter. (N.b., I’m specifically not addressing SFH and housing shortages in this, hopefully that’s for a different thread)

typest 3y ago
A city on its own generally has the power to change zoning and land use laws. There are limitations (some states give cities more or less power here) but generally cities do have the ability to make changes that would reduce noise and improve quality of life for their residents. On the other hand, cities do not have the ability to redesign cars. A city can’t just choose to invent a quieter car! I would love it if we can engineer cars and trucks to be quieter; I think though that a more feasible path for any city is to work on zoning and land use changes.
Xylakant 3y ago
> What this tells me is that the internal combustion engine is a bad idea everywhere but especially in a dense urban core. Engine noise only dominates up to roughly 20mph, at higher speeds the tire noise is the dominating component until roughly 100mph where wind becomes the dominant. So this: > The solution to road noise doesn’t have to be a dramatic rezoning and a reversion to Europe everywhere. It could be to make cars and trucks quieter. Would mean both switching to electric cars and reducing speeds significantly to less than 20mph.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  This is about the urban core. Speed in the urban core in every US city I know is 20.
  - 3y ago

lost_tourist 3y ago

this is why EV's can't come soon enough, I live near a street and tire sound is pretty loud but it's the Harleys, oversized pickups, and fart can compacts that took some getting used to.

pandaman 3y ago

>This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees. So they have quiet bars were people quietly get wasted and quietly walk home? Quiet trucks quietly unloading goods for the shops every morning? Quiet dumpster trucks quietly picking up commercial dumpsters and quietly flipping them over every night? If we had these in the US I'd be fine with mixed zoning too. As of now I don't hear any noise from the two lane arterial street behind my backyard but I used to live in an apartment with a window roughly 500' away from a small bar (just a local watering hole in a strip mall, completely inside, not trendy at all) in a direct line of sight and I had to sleep with a white noise machine because of all the screaming the patrons produced walking out (or in?).