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Europe Begins Noise Mapping Effort
Makarand writes "The European continent has begun its fight against noise pollution by initiating a
program
to map noise levels for cities in the European Union with more than 250,000 people.
As placing microphones on every building in London or Paris to measure noise
was not practical, data on the amount of traffic carried by roads and the noise levels was fed into computers to generate a model of noise levels across the city. The model's accuracy was verified by taking readings with microphones at 100 points in the city and was found to be accurate on average to within 1 decibel.
The noise maps will allow planning to insulate the public from noise by directing traffic away from residential areas and making funds available to sound-proof thin walled homes."
I don't think America worried about this as much, as there was always more land, more space, more suburban sprawl. In European areas where land has turned more of a scarcity, then we see this interesting phenonom as a solution. Perhaps the same principals will be applied to more congested American cities too. It seems a good, bottom-up approach: re-routing traffic light signals and road development based upon environmental feedback.
The Custom Mary
BIKES? I guess you do not mean motorbikes. Because of the increase in congestion in and around Paris, there are more and more people that use motorbikes/scooters. The result is a big increase in noise levels, no reduction in polution (bikes produce more polution than most cars, surprisingly) and a large increase in fatal accidents.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Please explain this to me. Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. Someone else spends the time to investigate their choices, and eventually spends more money on a house with more sound proof walls. Why should the person who spent extra to buy a house with soundproof walls now have to pay additional taxes to soundproof someone else's home - someone else who didn't care enough about it to shop for that feature in the first place?
It's obvious if you live in Europe, where a lot of houses and buildings are old, and do not provide adequate sound-proofing.
If you add to this situation the fact that a lot of streets in large European cities are small and not made for cars (meaning medieval streets, not US-Grid-Style streets/boulevard), you have a recipe for a lot of noise and pollution, which many European cities are/were not designed to take into account.
Also, if you are lucky enough to find a cheap place to live in one of those cities (London and Paris -- for instance -- are among the most expensive places on Earth), noise control is going to be the least of your worries -- rent is a killer in those cities. And forget about space, since having more than one bedroom is going to deplete your bank account for the next 10 years or so.
Finally, I suspect most european governments are going to finance this simply by giving tax-breaks to people who will overhaul the sound-proofing of their flats and houses, and not tax other home owners.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
of how complex these issues are, is the national airport in Brussels-Belgium : being such a densely populated country, there's no practical way to have airplanes land & take off without flying over housing areas. And with both traffic and houses increasing, the problem has now reached proportions where people are starting lawsuits against the govt for noise terrorism. Some have dozens of planes flying over at low altitude per night. That's a plane every 10 minutes. You try to sleep with that. Even tripple-isolated glass & roofs can't stop the sound of a cargo airplane. Especially old, russian planes (who have now been ruled illegal for flight)
Allthough, personally i would find the noise the least of my worries : my mother in law lives near another airport (Oostende) After those huge, bulky cargo planes took off, there's a very intense kerosene odor that hangs in the streets for 15-30 minutes, depending on the weather. Yikes !
I don't understand how peeps in Singapore survive this (well.. i gues they don't...)
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Ive not read the whole of the posts here, but Im willing to bet there are allot of people crying "oh, this is pork, governments wasting money -- ha ha you Europeans pay tones of taxes and see it wasted ha ha suckers. bureaucracy run amuck with naval gazing. ha ha." kinds of attitude.
Really, how better to dedicate the resources of ones culture than the investigation of the cause/effect and remedy for general, shared problems? Why the hell not? I can think of no better things to investigate.
The masses are convinced -- almost without pause -- that spending money on single-serving yogurt-like snacks(ever *made* your own yogurt -- VERY VERY GOOD & EASY), RetiredBoxerBrand electric grills (whats wrong with your stove?), ZXY(TM) Brand $200 shoes, and blah blah blah is a good reward in exchange for my personal effort (the $ youve collected in exchange for work).. I say hogwash.
If Im going to sacrifice 40hrs of ever week, I damn well want something worth while in exchange for my Cached-Work($). Being the sucker in some capitalist's get-rich scheme, at the expense of the planet (pollution/waste/garbage) is not all that attractive -- but insead of paying for research like this (in taxes) people are usually DrivenByMindControl to buying SomeDamnedGarbage.
Where am i going with this? What is more useful? What is the greatest benefit of the product of our collective resources (the above mentioned consumer-garbage) **OR** some peace from the endless noise in a mechanized-industrial city....
I am willing to forgo buying some of that seemingly-benign-consumer-garbage in order to help pay researchers to think about something useful. Are you? Im betting most sane, normal people would agree. Instead of working to make Widgets (as I do), I wish there was a greater market for doing something WorthWhile. The Automobile that I contribute to manufacturing is not a goal I consider worthy of my time. I have no problem working, its the *goal* or product of my effort that is worthless. But, we live in a world with F'ed up priorities (we spend to much of our Cached-Work($) buying Useless Garbage, making the production of Useless Garbage a more common goal that most would like)
These kinds of 'decisions' and 'trade-offs' are taking place all the time (every thing you do has an impact on the world). Stop and think occasionally: "what benefit, at what cost is my decision having to bear on myself and my community? What responsibility do I accept or abandon that are the consequences of this decision? How can I make the world just a little better at Zero or No 'cost' to myself or my community?"
So, how far off topic is this?