Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Noise pollution often underestimated but significantly impacting our lives, has become a pressing concern in major cities worldwide. From the bustling streets of Brussels to the vibrant ambience of Paris, urban dwellers are increasingly raising their voices against incessant noise. — Brussels Times
Exposure to noise pollution above an annual average of 53 decibels has been shown to shorten lifespans for city dwellers. Brussels, where 70% of residents are at-risk, has begun experimenting with pleasing “soundscapes” among other, more practical interventions that include lower speed limits... View full entry
Los Angeles District Councilmember Kevin de León recently introduced a motion proposing a program titled "Park Blocks," modeled after Barcelona’s Superblock initiative, which would establish usable public space for pedestrians and cyclists by closing certain streets to motorized... View full entry
The New York State Assembly and Senate have passed a bill barring the construction of schools within 500 feet of a highway. The Schools Impact by Gross Highways Act (or SIGH Act) was written to protect school-age children from air pollution. Under the bill, which will also apply to New York City... View full entry
A new study by researchers out of The Ohio State University investigates a different kind of design for absorbing vibrations that could better soundproof materials. Ryan Harne, senior author of the paper and former associate professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State, along with... View full entry
The system uses a microphone outside the window to detect the repeating sound waves of the offending noise source, which is registered by a computer controller. That in turn deciphers the proper wave frequency needed to neutralize the sound, which is transmitted to the array of speakers on the inside of the window frame. — The New York Times
A team of researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore led by Masaharu Nishimura and Bhan Lam have developed a prototype approach that can decrease the amount of urban noise that infiltrates a dwelling. The grid of circular speakers is installed within the open window frame... View full entry
Let's face it, construction noise isn't the most pleasant sounding thing. However, it's a vital part of the design process when working on a project. But what if the loud beeping of cranes and other bothersome acoustic noise could be turned into rhythmic music? Thanks to Reddit users... View full entry
Cars and trucks on one of Europe’s most notoriously congested and polluted urban highways would not only be obliged to drive more slowly, they’d have less room to do it: The number of beltway lanes open to all traffic would also be slashed from eight to six. One lane will be reserved for public, emergency, and zero-emissions vehicles. The other one is to be devoted to trees. — CityLab
Paris officials are making plans to redesign the traffic lanes for the city's 22-mile-long ring road, Boulevard Périphérique. A recent report calls for retrofitting the eight-lane highway as part of a wider effort to crack down on car usage across the city. Since taking office in 2014, Paris... View full entry
A team of Boston University researchers recently stuck a loudspeaker into one end of a PVC pipe. They cranked it up loud. What did they hear? Nothing.
How was this possible? Did they block the other end of the pipe with noise canceling foams or a chunk of concrete? No, nothing of the sort. The pipe was actually left open save for a small, 3D-printed ring placed around the rim. That ring cut 94% of the sound blasting from the speaker, enough to make it inaudible to the human ear.
— Fast Company
"The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from," explain the Boston University researchers behind the discovery: Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a... View full entry
Watch professional tennis, and you'll notice that silence makes up a significant part of the game, to the point where spectators can hear the bounce of the ball each time it lands on the playing surface. The acoustics of the new Rossetti Architects-designed roof for the Arthur Ashe stadium, which... View full entry
To live in New York means to get habituated to the noise of everyday life here...As a neighborhood becomes more homogenous, and its residents sync their noise patterns, noise complaints tend to go down. This may explain why, controlling for other factors, gentrifying areas of the city display higher levels of noise complaints. City residents stop consciously recognizing noise as novel, and it becomes background, even if their bodies don’t always recognize it as such. — Nautilus
“We all love to hate the noise. And yet sitting in silence, I do not feel as if I’ve found an escape from pain: I have simply traded it for a new variety. Shockingly, I realize I want to trade back.”Writer Susie Neilson delves into the pros and cons of urban noise pollution, a truly defining... View full entry
residents are taking aim at the disruption caused by construction, the uprooting of cherished institutions, the buildings’ designs and the ever-higher prices attached to the housing that they fear will alter neighborhoods fundamentally. — NYT
C. J. Hughes examines how some NYC residents are reacting to an ongoing boom in construction, enabled/exemplified by the rezoning of 37 percent of the city under the Bloomberg administration. From filing noise complaints, pushing for height moratoriums, to fighting against the loss of public... View full entry
On stormy days and windy nights, Tribeca residents say their neighborhood is filled with a strange, high-pitched whistling sound coming from the redeveloped World Trade Center site. It's an inopportune location for howling (although, really, where is?), but it's hardly the first building to surprise its neighbors by humming or whistling. [...]
But just to be clear? It's not haunted. Port Authority's rep told Pix 11 he hopes ghost stories won't "become part of the dialogue."
— gizmodo.com