I've long been intrigued by the fact that poor and non-poor people have such different relationships to noise. I'm not talking about Victorian silence or library shushing, just about normal life. Poor people tend to live loudly, throw parties, play music, and squabble with each other. Middle-class folks don't, and they don't want their neighbors doing it either. They really, really don't want to live in the middle of cacophony.
This is not just a sociological curiosity, either. Why is it that so many middle-class folks hate the idea of Section 8 vouchers being available for nearby apartments? Sure, some of it is racism, some of it is fear of drugs. But a large part of it is noise. Middle-class apartment dwellers are convinced that if poor people move in next door they're going to have to put up with nonstop yelling, whooping, partying, loud music playing, and so forth. Their lives will be ruined.
That's one side of the story, anyway, and it's one I empathize with since I'm a middle-class guy who prefers that my neighbors wind down their parties by midnight. But what does it look like from the other side? In the Atlantic this month, Xochitl Gonzalez talks about his freshman year on an Ivy League campus:
Within a few weeks, the comfort that I and many of my fellow minority students had felt during those early cacophonous days had been eroded, one chastisement at a time. The passive-aggressive signals to wind our gatherings down were replaced by point-blank requests to make less noise, have less fun, do our living somewhere else, even though these rooms belonged to us, too. A boisterous conversation would lead to a classmate knocking on the door with a “Please quiet down.” A laugh that went a bit too loud or long in a computer cluster would be met with an admonishment.
....I had taken the sounds of home for granted. My grandmother’s bellows from across the apartment, my friends screaming my name from the street below my window. The garbage trucks, the car alarms, the fireworks set off nowhere near the Fourth of July. The music. I had thought these were the sounds of poverty, of being trapped. I realized, in their absence, that they were the sounds of my identity, turned up to 11.
I imagine that if you were brought up in a noisy neighborhood, this feels natural. By contrast, a quiet, middle-class neighborhood seems a little creepy, as if you were living in a library. Where is everybody? What are they doing? Why is it so damn silent?
The folks raised in quiet families feel just the opposite, of course. How can I think with all this crap going on? It's maddening! Will everyone please just shut up? Gonzalez again:
I find many city noises nerve-racking and annoying: jackhammers doing street maintenance, the beeping of reversing trucks, cars honking for no good reason. Yet these noises account for a small minority of all noise complaints. Nearly 60 percent of recent grievances center on what I’d consider lifestyle choices: music and parties and people talking loudly. But one person’s loud is another person’s expression of joy. As my grandmother used to say, “I’m not yelling, this is just how I tawk!”
I'm not sure what to say about all this. Except for one thing: Don't constantly shush people around sleeping babies. Let them learn to sleep with a normal amount of noise surrounding them. They'll thank you when they grow up.
I realize this is anecdotal, but this is perpetually my biggest neighbor complaint. When I bought my first house, it was in a "working class" neighborhood with about 1/4 of my neighbors being LOUD. Whether it was music, domestic disputes, TV's, exuberant family gatherings, all of it drove me nuts. I don't care what color your paint your house, I just don't want to hear you.
My new middle class neighborhood is much, much quieter. Although we have a new next door neighbor who handed a microphone (karaoke machine?) to a young child for 20 minutes at a 4th of July gathering and now I hate them.
It's not the loud noise I mind so much as the innapropriate hours. If I have to be up at six the following morning, I don't want to hear Mariachi music at one in the a.m. Then there was the drum circle going on until sunrise that the neighboorhood had to shut down about five years back ... I live in Rogers Park, for people who know the Chicago area.
Yes, it is partly and importantly about inappropriate hours. Like leaf blowers and lawn mowers before 7 AM. Some folks think they should be allowed to operate internal combustion machines without mufflers on their property anytime they want. How is this different from outdoor parties at all hours?If shouting and recorded music blasted all over the neighborhood OK, why not noisy machinery or a dog barking all hours of the night? Once the noise (not the source, the sound waves) leave your property, my rights become involved.
Good call on the dawn lawn care. That's every bit as, er, noisome on a weekend morning as is loud music on a weekday night. It's got nothing to do with 'culture' as this nasty little git of an author is trying to claim.
i live in a rather tight neighborhood. if i'm in my yard and i hear your noise, fine. no problem. if i'm in my house, doors and windows closed, problem. and it's one thing if it's in the middle of the day and the noise is from having your roof re-done; it's another thing entirely if it's your music blaring regardless if its mariachi or beethoven's ninth.
https://youtu.be/CI22CMzL7oo
Is Kevin Drum revealing himself as Dylan Toback?
My cousin did graduate work from the dorms at Gallaudet University, the noted institution of higher learning for hearing impaired in DC. Should be a quiet place, right?
Wrong. Turning stereos to the max output produces palpable sound waves. If several students are doing that max thing simultaneously, things get interesting quickly. Akin to cars with the strident sound systems passing by.
Forget Boomer or Millenial. The newest generation will come to be known as the Huh?ers I predict.
This has been known since well before Troy Kotsur was bumping Souther hiphop from his pickup in CODA.
I really disliked that piece. And I don't have any respect for the author of it either. Talk about 'passive-aggressive'; they had it. In spades. Yeah, some of us really did major in objectively hard subjects and really did want to graduate with a GPA north of 3.0. I would have said 2.0 back in the day, but grade inflation is a thing in higher education as well.
Xochitl Gonzalez was not a STEM student, so has little or no experience with deep precision thinking. Got a BA in Art History. That says it all.
As I noted elsewhere, if noise isn't a problem, why are tests conducted in rooms where everybody is told to be quiet?
Even though Kevin wrote "Xochitl Gonzalez talks about his freshman year", Gonzalez is female.
I grew up in a very quiet house in a very quiet neighborhood, for good or for ill. I can’t sleep unless it’s completely quiet (except for the noise machine I started to use 10 years as I got older and had more trouble sleeping, quiet or not). I can’t concentrate if there is noise. When I hear a truck on my street, I can’t tune it out…I have to pause what I’m doing until it passes. College dorm living was horrible for me. I couldn’t get to sleep until the dorm got quiet (usually by 1 am or so), and typically had early classes, so I was sleep deprived until I moved off campus.
Now, I don’t feel that my way is the “right” way. I don’t think others are being unreasonable to want to live their lives as THEY were brought up and in the ways that give them joy. But I’m not being unreasonable, either! I guess what we all have to do is to find neighborhoods that are conducive to our preferred way of living with or without much noise. The problem with this, though, is that unwittingly we are segregating ourselves by race, income, etc., when we do this.
Years ago when my wife and I were dating, we attended her family's Catholic church now and again when visiting her parents. This was LA, so most of the parishoners were Latino, but with a decent mix of professionals and working-class people, it seemed. Now I was raised in a small, WASP church where, when we weren't singing hymns, or the minister was preaching, you could hear a pin drop. In this place, kids were climbing over the pews, playing with Hotwheels, babies screaming, people having conversations with friends they were sitting next to, etc. I thought it was insane -- it drove me crazy. We were eventually married in that church, but in a much quieter ceremony.
The Catholic churches I had to go to as a kid were like being buried in a coffin they were so quiet, have they changed that much?
Probably the most extreme example I've experienced... went to see a movie in a black neighborhood, I was the only white guy in a packed house.
The experience was roughly equivalent to watching a movie in someone's living room during a house party. Everyone was chatting the entire time. Almost every scene caused a few people to talk to or yell at the screen. Meanwhile the kids in the theater were running up and down the aisle playing freeze tag.
Needless to say, a movie going culture completely incompatible with the one I was used to. 😛
Maybe a small allowance for self-segregation could be made. Have quiet showings and noisy showings on the schedule, take your pick. Like smoking and non-smoking used to be.
And who would enforce the rules of quiet showing? How would they enforce them?
Alamo drafthouse famously enforces them...they threaten one warning and they will kick you out.
China is very very very loud. That is all.
Very true. I spent a year in Taiwan and not only are the urban environments noisy like you'd expect anywhere, there are constantly, I mean CONSTANTLY, people setting off fireworks for various reason, and trucks driving around playing music and so on. Much of this is the very interesting funeral practices of Chinese culture, but not all of it. The Chinese have a word for that sort of means noisy in a fun and upbeat way--renao (think of a loud, crowded restaurant).
So I was going to say to Kevin, I think the noise thing is less socioeconomic and more cultural. Some cultures relish noise. Some don't.
We had some friends who spent a year on sabbatical in London. We visited them and they commented on how buttoned down the English were in general. We went out to eat one night and noticed a nearby table getting rather rowdy. My friend comment on how refreshing it was to see some English loosening up and having a good time. Then we listened more closely and realized the rowdy table was Australian.
Yep. Renao 热闹
It's deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. And it can be maddening. High street shops will sometimes blare loud pop music to "attract customers" (it would have just the opposite effect on me). And then the store next door feels they have to do the same lest no one notice them—only a bit louder. Which is then matched or exceeded by the next store. And so on. And the crowds of people walking down the street seem utterly oblivious, as if if the ear-bleed-inducing cacophonous arms race doesn't bother them in the slightest, and is the most natural thing in the world. It's quite extraordinary. And in my neighborhood old people (they're invariably old) just love to take these high powered portable speakers into public, outdoor spaces and do Karaoke for one and all (it usually drowns out all other sounds for at least 100 meters). If you'd rather not hear Granpa Wang belting out patriotic ballads while you're just trying to enjoy a quiet moment in the park, you're SOL. (What exactly do the Han have against birdsong?).
However for important stuff they keep it quiet.
During the Gaokao there are special rules to prevent car horns or other noise near test sites.
So I've seen a number of these "poor people are made to be quiet how unfair" stories, often in the context of gentrification ("XXX moved next door and she wanted us to quiet down at 3AM"), usually with the context that the people asking for quiet are in the wrong. One thing that these sorts of stories tend to ignore is that it's possible not everyone who grew up in the poor neighberhood WANTS it to be this loud, but they may not have any choice about the matter.
I live in a rapidly gentrifying area of NYC and have had a quite a number of conversations with mothers in the playground while our kids played together, a number of whom are African-American and grew up here (and they are, to be clear very welcoming and friendly! I've never really had a "get out of here gentrifier" experience).
Plenty of them complain about the idiots who let of fireworks all night during covid. There are also groups of young men who tend to drive around on illegal and very loud dirt bikes at various hours; they are annoying but harmless, but I've now heard 3 separate old-timers talk about how much they hated them growing up. But I suspect that complaining back in the day wouldn't accomplish anything (them being illegal already etc).
We have those dirt bikes as well. But progressive (and white) city leadership insist it is the "culture" of the community. As is lighting off fireworks all night long from June to the end of August.
The current crop of progressives are nothing more than GOTV for the GOP.
Amen!
That is exactly right.
I think these jackasses on dirt bikes, and who screw up their truck engines to makes the loudest, most aggressive fuck you noises should be jailed for decades. People who do this are never going to make a more significant contribution to society than that, and most likely less, so why should they be tolerated?
My fantasy superpower would be to force the stereos of loud music/subwoofer cars rattling the windows of my house as they pass to play only Lawrence Welk bubble music. And they can’t turn it off or down.
Mwaaa ha ha ha!
That or a whale quietly building up to pitching you funeral insurance while going on about his kids soccer team. He's a master at sucking the life right out of anything.
As a bicyclist I hate over-loud vehicles with a passion. I use hearing as well as sight to judge the traffic I'm in, but when something is loud enough it overwhelms everything else I might as well be briefly deaf.
Mayor Adams had the Transportation guys run over a bunch of confiscated dirt bikes with a huge truck. I laughed heartily. Poor Staten Island rock heads!
There are also groups of young men who tend to drive around on illegal and very loud dirt bikes at various hours
This general phenomenon (and closely related activities) seems to have exploded in popularity in America. Am I right? I remember reading a story about groups of young toughs on motorcycles or scooters terrorizing different neighborhoods in Boston.
Great, so I need to be interrupted from sleep so this asshat can take his identity up to 11? Can people identify as hardworking and respectful of their neighbors anymore? Or is that White Supremacy Culture as well?
I love my old hippy neighbors who complained about our 4th of July party years ago (which was over by 5PM). They don't say a word about the guy sitting in his car at 3AM blasting rap though. Might be afraid the Politburo will come take their yard signs away.
The right amount of noise is none.
Habitual loudness reflects manic aggression which teeters on the edge of some kind of violent incident which promotes a steady substream of anxiety through everything around it.
If you can't relax without the cloud of threat you're creating, whether you know it or not, try earbuds. And if you're wearing earbuds and I can hear them across the parking lot I would say it should be illegal to turn them up that high.
We are a grumpy lot, aren't we 🙂 I suspect that 95% plus of Kevin's readers, from the far left to the far right agree on this one.
And hey, you kids get off of my lawn.
You kids, shut the fuck up before I start cranking Lawrence Welk records.
cld-
Play a video of Myron Cohen playing a polka on the accordion with Cissy and Bobby dancing to it!!!
If the music doesn't sicken them the visuals will.........
Too cruel. Perhaps I was being hasty.
Maybe I'll put on those ambient tones advertised to grow your teeth back, cranked up to 11.
Myron Floren. Myron Cohen was a great American storyteller. Showed up on Sullivan all the time. Same era.
What? Wait! But I knew who he meant!
My brain actually read that as Myron Floren.
"this myron cope on sports" was indeed a great storyteller with a voice suited for print. but somehow that one great talent more than made up for an extreme lack of the other. if someone other than a pittsburgher met him they'd never guess from listening to him that he was one of the city's most beloved radio figures.
Is it scary that I can remember and sing the closing song/jingle to that show?-)
My parents had truly appalling taste in almost everything, the only tv they'd watch was Gunsmoke, Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk.
I recall that when I went to college, some dorms were well known to be party dorms, and others had a reputation for either "boring" or "quiet", depending on how you saw it. These were pretty much all white people, with a few exceptions. I moved to the "quiet" dorm, which was mostly populated by upperclassmen anyway. It was very interesting and social, but not loud.
Before I did that, I had a situation where the guy in the next room over once had his phone ring for an hour at 3 in the morning. They guy was the starting free safety for the UW Huskies at the time, and had a world class glower when we saw him on the stairs, so we didn't mention it to him. But man, that was irritating.
Contrariwise, I have a vacation condo with downstairs neighbors who live their full-time and get wound up if we walk too loudly after about 8pm. Yikes!
So, I think there are limits. I also think you can talk to people about it, but probably the whole "how dare you!" approach is a problem. Instead, you can say things like "Wow, I need to get up early tomorrow, and I'd like to sleep."
I don't know that I felt that I was entitled to quiet study space in my room. Most folks went to the library, which is understood to be a quiet space, if they needed that much quiet. I kind of don't, so it wasn't a thing for me.
Are you saying the only dorms at UW that were loud and had lots of partying going on were majority Black? I find that unlikely to say the least, so possibly that is not what you meant. I lived in a dorm that was about 80% white, as were the two other dorms nearby. These were all party central pretty much every night and every weekend I could count on the bathroom being trashed too. The only quiet dorms were the all girls dorms or the ones reserved for grad students. This was FSU in the late 80s.
Old Seattle joke:
How do you get the pissed off glowering exHusky football player of your porch?
Answer: Pay him for the pizza he just delivered.
In the case of Hope Solo & Jerramy Stephens, they wouldn't leave, though. Prolly beat you up.
It seems to me that this is much more of a young vs old rather than affluent vs poor. My own experience is that its not the amount of noise but the type. I've been able to co-exist with everything from the normal knocks and bangs of apartment life, to loud talking, laughing and even, err, other forms of exuberant vocal expressions of happiness. *cough*
But that isn't tolerable is low frequency noise. Deep base moves through walls like they aren't even there. You can't dampen it, earplugs don't work and it feels like it physically touches you. The lower the frequency, the worse it gets. I've got a neighbor, a black kid in his early twenties, who loves to turn his subwoofer on during late night parties. He doesn't turn it up loud, but it doesn't matter. He's two units down and I can still feel it in my inner ear. So far, I've made sure to knock and ask him to turn it down rather than call the landlord or the police, but I'm sure he's getting as tired of me as I am of him.
Tolerance for normal neighbor noises is definitely a challenge of urban living but I think acclimation helps a ton. However, bass is the enemy of all that is good. Landlords should start including in lease agreements that emitting LFN is against terms of lease.
Plus 1 for your opening sentence.
When "noise" gets too loud, I put on my noise-cancelling over the ear headphones. It's a lot easier to get along in this world if you just adapt and accept the things you can't change.
There is research on noise levels and academic achievement (noise isn't good for learning). Sometimes I wonder if this is what really gives Finnish schools their advantage. Those Finns are eerily silent!
One of the things I love about living in my urban neighborhood is the lack of lawnmower noise. It's a lot of middle to upper middle class liberals on small lots, and after no-mow May you have a few electric lawn mowers or push mowers until the summer lack of rain makes the lawns go dormant (slightly richer liberals water the lawn, but that is the next neighborhood over). It's pretty quiet on Saturday afternoons!
I contrast that with my parents' rural lake home, which is nothing but riding lawn mowers and the shotgun range all weekend. Most of the people actually living on the lakeshore are quiet pontoon fishermen/beer drinkers or kayaker, but there is always that one guy with the insanely loud jetski.
My wife grew up in East LA, and there was always sound at their house. Roosters, music, folks talking/yelling to each other, cars driving by with loud music, late night parties, fireworks, etc... The fireworks celebrations on New Year Eve and the 4th of July sounded like the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, it was amazing to listen to.
One year we took my mother and brother-in-laws with us to Kona, and rented a condo along the ocean... Surf sounds from the waves lapping against the rocks at the base of the building. Idyllic, right?? The first morning we asked our in-laws how they slept and they complained it was too noisy due to the ocean! My wife and I still laugh at that moment.
So I guess you can say, "noise" is in the ear of the beholder.
Currently dealing with a noisy neighbor below me so have been reading up on the topic, a lot. OSHA uses the standard of 85 decibels over long durations at work as being too much, and the US torture program went with 78 dB. Not because it isn't effective at lower volumes but because of hearing damage. My neighbor usually runs his music around 85-95 dB at any time of the day or night, so I get the idea of it being torture.
Sadly my LL won't do anything, so since I now own three sets of noise cancelling headphones (go Sony M4's if you need them badly), I've taken to playing Death Metal to cover over not just the noise but the vibrations of his bass through my place. It's been fun hearing him complain "You don't understand, it's only ok when I do it!"
Fun fact, because of studies through the 70s, the feds started addressing noise pollution, until Reagan blocked the feds from further action and pushed it to the states.
"Poor people tend to live loudly, throw parties, play music, and squabble with each other."
There's a number of things wrong with that statement, beginning with the stereotyping and moving on from there, but I'm not going to dwell on it.
However, some fundamentals are being lost in this thread. For one, space and architecture. More space between dwellings means less carry-over noise, as do better wall construction and double-pained windows. For that reason alone it will sound quieter standing on a street in a middle-classed neighborhood than a "poor" neighborhood.
Two, noise competes with noise. I was at happy hour yesterday in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Signal Hill. The noise level for about a dozen people in the tables behind the bar stools rose to a ridiculous level, mainly because the TV's showing the game in the place were turned very loud, and then when different parties are chatting with one another, they need to raise their volume in order to be heard, and this becomes a cycle in conjunction with the overall festiveness and imbibing.
I've lived in some loud areas, where units were more pressed up against each other with less sound-suppression, if I want to hear my movie without hearing what's happening with my neighbors or rest of neighborhood, I'm going to turn up my TV, and this becomes a reinforcing cycle as well. Noise begets further noise.
As for kids running around and making noise, clearly you're going to hear almost none of that in a suburban neighborhood where there's decent space between units and better sound-suppression of the building construction, whereas in a less expensively-built apartment community with many shared walls you will hear a lot more of that, and then people start turning up their TVs to drown it out...
I've lived in lesser-income neighborhoods where houses were spread out and never heard my neighbors, unless there was a party, and I've lived in well-built condo communities with shared walls where I also never heard my neighbors. I've lived in expensive neighborhoods where one jackhole with 15" subwoofers in his car doesn't turn them down when coming home, which street-smart folks in working communities is idiotic because you're advertising a break-in of your car unless you have a very secure garage.
None of what I'm saying doesn't acknowledge there are "some" economic and cultural differences in noise, but I would suggest none of them would fit neatly enough into the "poor" box, as if to generalize this to all poor people and communities, because that would be quite frankly inaccurate.
The ever-expanding HOAs also play in a role in this, but I'll stop here.
Good comment. The poor live in high density housing, something the affluent avoid by moving to the suburbs.
Too many gunshots? Bad noise
Rap music? Bad noise
Shooting those who play rap music too loud? Good noise
Funny how the progressives in CA banned leaf blowers and gas powered lawn mowers but keep the allowance for dirt bikes, motorcycles, luxury yachts etc and no one complains about that.................
Is FOX considered bad noise?
one of the TVs at the gym to which i belong is tuned to fox. there is no sound, but it's still annoying ...
The quote from the grandmother reminded me of my (Jewish, New Yorker) ex-wife. She would interrupt me (Catholic, mid-Atlantic) all the time, and when I objected, she'd say "this is just how I talk." And when I spent time with her family, I saw that it was true: she, her mother, and her sister would literally all talk at the same time.
So I tried to be understanding--it was just a cuttural difference. But I came to realize it was an inherently unequal arrangement. If one person wants to be quiet but the other person wants to talk, there's talking. If one person likes noise and another doesn't, you can't just say "let each do their own thing," because the result is one-sided: the quiet person can't impose quiet on the environment the way the noisy person can impose noise.
I don't know what the answer is. I don't know why some people on the bus converse by yelling at each other from 3 feet away.
Noise is a big issue in suburbia, starting with construction noise, car & truck noise, and then working its way through the leaf blowers, generators, and lawn mowers. The premise that a desire for noise-free living is somehow a class or income-attributable thing is just not true.
Zoning regulations came out of the era when people got fed up with the noise amongst other industrial and density-related things. That was the 1930s.
"Zoning regulations came out of the era when people got fed up with the noise amongst other industrial and density-related things."
Not really. It was in an era when governments decided it was time to start building things with the assumption that everyone was going to need to get a car
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_in_the_United_States
We’ll, the actual family members of the Section 8 family who used to live across the street were fine. My youngest daughter played with one of the five children (four different dads) the mom had. And indeed there would be loud noise at late hours when vehicles various would arrive. Not easy to deal with when one’s AC is open windows at night. But doable with effort.
But the kicker was the fatal stabbing of the 18 year old boyfriend who confronted/became engaged with four uninvited guests to the fifteen year old daughter’s quinceanera.
Health effects from noise,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_from_noise
Among other things, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental health problems and increased aggression and violence, --in other words, it's social conservatism.
A neighbor used to practice his bass guitar in his detached garage. The garage
was burglarized. They took his amp, left his guitar.
Lol! They should have ripped out the wiring, too, just to make sure. And you can get money for copper!
That was just James & Lars pranking Jason.
i had a neighbor who routinely played his music loud but never so loud that i'd hear it in my house. one day, five years ago, he had his radio cranked up so blaringly loud that it was extremely annoying even inside. all day this went on. i debated what to do. i reluctantly yelled over across the fence a few times, but that was it. not wanting to be an asshole, that's all i did. that evening, there was a knock on my door. police. they wanted access to my yard so they could peer over the fence into my neighbor's to see what was going on. nothing. fire department arrives. still no word from my neighbor. finally, they break in and find my neighbor dead. he ran a portable generator in his house as a way of committing suicide and used the radio to mask the sound of the generator. the thought never crossed my mind that he would do that. i occasionally wonder what would have happened if i had been more willing to be an asshole.
Oh boy a buddy of mine experienced a similar tale recently though natural causes. The couple that lived in the house across the street divorced as the wife was very messed up and not taking her meds that keep her on an even keel. So the husband kept the house. My friend started seeing the guy less and less until one day in talking with the neighbors nobody had seen the guy for a couple of weeks. They gingerly approached the house rang the bell but no answer. Then they peer into the window and think they see the guy in a recliner. They call the police and they do a welfare check where they find the body. The guy died of natural causes but because his wife was estranged and he was retired and introverted there was nobody noticing until his body was rather decomposed.
OT: KD, won't you chime in on the possibility of SCOTUS eventually blocking women who are impregnated in a restrictive state from getting an out of state abortion? With states granting personhood to fetuses at conception, it seems inevitable that states will exert their interests in "protecting" those persons conceived within their state, and I think the religious conservatives will demand this.
Don't tell them about the company that wants to sell you a cloned embryo of yourself so you can harvest it's organs,
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/04/1056633/startup-wants-copy-you-embryo-organ-harvesting/
The Island was a documentary.
The courts cannot make positive law. So no, the Supreme Court cannot do that on its own say-so. But it could refuse to strike down state-enacted laws prosecuting women who go out of state for abortions.
About a month ago, for this first time living in our current house for the past four years, my wife actually drove around the block to go talk to our "backyard neighbor" who was having a party with a DJ. Pulling out the decibel meter, it was 78 DB in our backyard. It was in the high 80's if you went to the alley behind the fence. She tried knocking on the fence, but no one in the backyard, who were probably experiencing high 90's DB, heard. All of those violate OSHA limits.
Luckily the neighbor was reasonable, and had the DJ turn it down by about 10 DB. (That was still likely loud enough to cause damage to folks in his backyard, but that's not our problem.)
City life is going to come with the extra noise, but there should be some reasonable limits.
Now if I can get him to stop playing the same 5 songs on continuous loop that he's been playing every summer weekend for the past 4 years, victory will be complete ...
Some people referenced this, and I agree with them: in poor neighborhoods, by definition, nobody can escape the noise even if they despise it, so they must learn to live with it. Whereas, as soon as people get enough money to not live at a subsistence level, many of them decide to indulge in spending some of their discretionary money to move away from noise... and once they do, they resent anybody bringing that noise into their self-selected quiet neighborhood. Honestly, the same holds true for all externalities: poor neighborhoods put up with a lot more graffiti, air pollution, noxious land-uses, homeless tents, etc. than wealthier neighborhoods do... not necessarily because they like those things but because they realize they cannot escape them so might as well make the best of it.
I'm sure noise is a part of it, but there's another aspect of Section 8 housing that people don't like that I'm going to bring up: crime.
Back when I managed a Domino's Pizza, my delivery drivers hated going into the Section 8 area. It didn't take long to figure out why, either: the only times that they were subject to abuse was in that area. Whether it was muggings, stolen car-tops, and even once a stolen car, it was the one place nobody wanted to deliver to. No amount of tips (not that they were good tippers) can make up for having your car stolen while you were out knocking on an apartment door.
Once a quarter, the Dominos managers for the county would have a meeting. I brought this up, hoping that the rules could be changed so that my drivers wouldn't have to go there. The push-back came in the form of the contract between corporate and the franchisee whom I worked for. We weren't allowed to wholesale blacklist an entire area. Because fuck the drivers; corporate profits were more important. It would take a driver getting shot before it could be changed.
Refusal to serve those areas would likely get Domino’s hit with discrimination lawsuits.
Most annoying noise I have had to put up with at home was scooters and small motorcycles with no mufflers in France driving by in the middle of the night at illigal speeds. Guaranteed to wake you up.
Surprisingly loud place are Scottish pubs (at least Aberdeen pubs). Everyone stands, gets very close to each other and yells as loud as they can. Not due to loud music or TV sports just because everyone is doing the same thing. Coming from an English and Canadian middle class background it was hard to get used to.