Not Just Bikes
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 18 months, 2021–2025
17:08 · 2.3M views · Jun 28, 2021
Not Just Bikes argues that urban noise comes mostly from motor vehicles, drawing on the book Curbing Traffic and a visit to Delft, a city that takes noise seriously.
HN cites it constantly in threads on noise, EVs and car-free cities as the source that cars, not cities, are loud.
20 comments from Hacker News
Watch his video. Pick 2-3 at random, be a grown up and ignore the tone of voice and the snarkiness, and see what his points are. They're very solid. Try something like this: this video [LINK]
> Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud. Fantastic video with that very name exploring just how true this is: this video
An addendum to the posted article: this video Cities aren't loud; motor vehicles are. Tire noise near heavy stroads and highways are in particular egregious offenders. There's a lot of other points in the comments about some other urban nuisances (leaf blowers, anyone?) but I encourage anyone to walk around (yes, walk) while measuring the ambient noise levels with your smartphone's microphone. It will be extremely obvious where the noise is coming from. This is an often misunderstood part of "the war on cars:" the stress gained from additional constant noise (e.g. like a highway) takes YEARS off our lives. And don't get me started on how loud shops are in North America. For whatever reason they seem to always keep the volume three or four levels above comfortable, making it much harder to have a conversation without shouting at least a little. It wasn't until I started traveling a lot that I started to notice any of this. You can have your quiet part of town, but often you get to your quiet part of town by driving through the noisiest part of town where a good number of people live and work.
I don't get why I am getting such emotional responses. Most of the noise in cities comes from cars, that is a fact. Even dense cities can be fairly quiet. I suggest watching this video: this video Plus China has probably not the best building codes, the problem can be further improved by having proper sound isolation in homes. Dense cities mean you will have everything in walking distance. There will be much more space for parks and other areas of recreation.
I think you'll be very interested in the "Not Just Bikes" channel as he talks a lot about urban planing. There's a lot of political will and momentum for making living spaces ... livable in Europe. Places like The Netherlands and Denmark in particular. A video specifically about noise pollution and how European cities are trying to solve it - this video