‘It’s really interesting to see responses to the current peacefulness that’s come about as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown — the strangeness of being able to hear street level conversations from my apartment, and all the sounds you pick up now that transportation noise has been cut out’, says Erica Walker. ‘I think it’s going to get a lot of people thinking about the quiet they do and don’t live with’
Quiet is what Walker wants to make a lot of noise a- bout. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University School of Public Health and founder of Noise and the City, a campaign and research organisation studying urban noise levels. And, what’s more, she argues that quiet — or rather peacefulness as she prefers to emphasise — is a human right. ‘Absolutely’, she says, ‘though it’s a negotiation between many different factors. We should all at least have the right to negotiate for peacefulness. It’s a matter of all voices being heard’.
If not too loudly, that is. Quiet, after all, is arguably a matter of class. While it’s true that prime real estate still tends to be located in city centres — close to the action — still it’s the poorer members of society who invariably are housed nearest to transportation lines and factories. Likewise, a future of quieter cities may prove available to those who can afford the tech that may make their lives less noisy. ‘There is’, as Walker puts it, ‘an inequitable distribution of quiet’.
But should the matter of noise be taken seriously? There are, it seems, many reasons why it’s not, at least relative to, say, air pollution. For one, it’s temporary: loud, distracting noises typically come and go, leav- ing no trace on the environment (and have often gone by the time any local authority can respond to a complaint). Noise is not visible, so its negative effects tend to pass unnoticed, as real as those effects are — consequently noise ordinances are rarely enforc- ed. And then there’s the matter of perception: noise is considered an indicator of progress or technolo- gical advancement and so, in a sense, welcomed. ‘Plenty of people get excited about the idea of, for example, our packages being delivered by drones’, says Walker, ‘but I dread to think what impact that will have on noise levels’.
Of course, there’s also the fact that making our ci- ties more peaceable will cost money that city autho- rities are typically unwilling to spend — even if some are willing to take on new, sound-dampening thinking for future development, correcting past mistakes would be too radical for most.
‘Present ideas [about how noise really has an impact] and they get laughed out of the room and typically because they’re obviously going to cost money’, admits Walker, who over the last two years has been working on developing metrics to better describe the environmental soundscape, with, she hopes, more solid data allowing campaigners to advocate for change. ‘But sound isn’t even just auditory. There’s the screech of a bus’s brakes. But there’s also the low frequency sound its engine produces that is more felt than heard. That’s a key factor in the way sound is perceived by people who live, say, near industrial plants or airports’.
Certainly technology is offering some prospect of a quieter future: from leaf-blowers to air-conditioning units, building materials — Arizona and California are experimenting with a rubberised asphalt called Quiet Pavement — and the next generation of products will produce either less sound, direct it more efficiently, or mitigate its transference. Be happy that, after two years of development, researchers at Brigham Young University have now finally produced a vacuum-assisted toilet that is half as loud as your regular aircraft commode. The first flight of an electrically powered commercial aircraft in December 2019 was another important step.
But such advances may prove limited, and not merely because of patterns of ‘rural flight’ globally. In 2018, the European Union introduced new rules that stated traditional car engines, for example, must make 25 percent less noise, around four decibels’ worth; yet, it also mandated that — from last summer — new silent electric cars must also be fitted with some kind of sound generator that kicks in below 12 mph, ba- sically to prevent pedestrians from walking out in front of them. So get ready to hear a lot about AVAS — acoustic vehicle alerting systems. Some high-end car makers are looking to develop a signature electric engine sound to replace the ‘authentic’ and highly marketable note of their combustion engine.
‘Silence is what you normally want in a luxury saloon, for example. But [with the advent of the electric en- gine] now we have a question we’ve not had to ask ourselves in the 106 years of our history: What does an Aston Martin electric engine sound like’? says John Caress, the company’s electric vehicle line di- rector. ‘Drivers of performance cars do connect with the sound of the vehicle — the exhaust note, the engine — and not having that feature anymore means we just have to encourage them to connect to the other senses’.
There’s the risk that a new high-tech noise source will merely replace an older, more traditional one. Such considerations certainly side-step the very real impact that urban sound levels are having; ones that, better understood, might see rising noise pollution as the next major consumer battleground — akin perhaps to the efforts to remove lead from petrol. Sound levels in metropolises can regularly reach 70 decibels, as loud as a vacuum cleaner at close range. That’s not good for your hearing. But recent studies have now revealed the link between sound levels and elevated levels of stress, and in turn worsened immune systems, heart issues, anxiety, and depression. The body reacts to sound even while in deep sleep.
‘That, of course, all carries an economic cost in terms of negatively effecting performance and producti- vity’, says Andrew Smith, professor of psychology at the University of Cardiff, UK, specialising in the non- auditory effects of noise on cognition and health. ‘The problem is that we’ve become acclimatised to high noise levels — we’re unconscious of the psychological but also [potentially permanent] physiological damage it’s doing. That’s why for many, the quiet of lockdown is almost too quiet, and why we might be hit hard when we’re exposed to “normal” sound levels again after lockdown. We need to start thinking of having more quiet as part of wider environment improvement, as with having cleaner air for example’.
Indeed, the damage noise does to human (but also animal) life is subtle and insidious, but it’s been known about for some time: The classic study by Arline Bronzaft in 1974 showed how the reading scores of sixth- grade students on the side of a school building looking onto railway tracks were a year behind those on the other, quieter side of the building. In 2002, another study led by professor in environmental psychology Staffan Hygge found that the reading comprehension skills of children who lived near an airport improved after the airport moved locations — and how the learning of children who now found themselves living by the new airport declined in turn. Stress hormone levels also declined and rose respectively.
And it’s not just about there being too much noise, but also the simple absence of silence — silence which, further recent studies suggest, can prompt the hippocampus area of the brain to generate new cells. Small wonder that since Toronto-based design agency Navy instigated a daily ‘quiet time’ time four years ago, productivity has improved by 23 percent, the company claims. Or that, a few years back, Finland’s tourist board began to market silence as a desirable resource, like clean water. Perhaps one day medicine will prescribe silence therapeutically.
‘Quiet is the essential component of reflection, for allowing the experiences of the day to resonate and effect change on how we live. It’s quiet that allows the mind to wander which in turn allows new ideas to surface’, argues Are Holen, professor emeritus of behavioural medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. ‘Quiet is important on the psychological, physiological, but even the existential level. This is not to argue against modernity in our noisy cities, but we do need to find some balance’.
