[techsupporter]

> but the outliers make you go crazy

Agreed, so very much. I live across the way from an old-age care home and, based on stereotypes, you'd figure that would be quiet living. Not so much. Their landscaping crew gets out with leaf blowers every day, they have a weekly generator run-up test that lasts for half an hour and pulses with a deep bass, and every few hours on every nice day they pump out the best hits from the 1940s and 1950s on their outdoor patio.

Almost all of these are louder than the city's rules permit but code enforcement has told me that because both buildings face each other over a privately-owned parcel (one of these "privately owned public spaces"), the noise transmission rules do not apply.

I found this out after I called the care home, twice, to ask if they could maybe turn down the music or do the generator test later in the day (when more people are out and it would be drowned out by other ambient noise) only to be told, politely, to bugger off.

I like living in a city and am not going to move--it's not that annoying, compared to benefits I get in return--but sometimes I wish the commons weren't so tragedy.

[shados]

This is something that drives me banana. The answer you'll get is always "Well, cities are noisy, deal with it or live in the suburb.

But the thing is they don't have to be. Sure, you have to expect people talking, cars going through, people mowing the grass, the occasional honking. But even in the middle of Manhattan, the only noise that will wake you up in the morning are people being assholes or breaking rules. Special construction permits that have no business being issued (eg: jackhammers in the middle of the night), people screaming (why?), harleys motorcycles (why is that legal?), neighbors blasting music (you can hear it just fine, can you lower it a bit?), musicians in apartments (can't you use an electronic drum to practice?).

Everything's avoidable. People are just inconsiderate, and/or the problem isn't taken seriously. But no, it's not inherent to living in a dense area, unless you're talking about "being surrounded by assholes" being inherent to cities. Then yeah.

suburbs aren't really a solution because people can be assholes everywhere. But even if they weren't, current pushes to get rid of restrictive zoning means you won't be safe in a suburb for much longer anyway. We need solutions for noise in densely populated areas because we're not going to be able to avoid it long terms. The solutions all exist, they just need to be implemented and enforced.