Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilyanep | Hacker News Reader

I have to say I'm a little bit low on sympathy. Since when has anyone moved to New York City for the quiet?

I hate this weird condescending attitude about New York City. "NYC's a loud filthy crime trap. Everyone knows it. How dare people try to improve things."

Generally speaking NYC is loud because of things people do. If we can reduce the amount of noisy shit happening in the city, then yes, it'll be quieter and a better place to live.

People in large cities are allowed to demand a decent quality-of-life.

And there are still some very quiet areas in Manhattan. Financial District is one of them at night.

And to extend your point:

NYC != Midtown Manhattan

Generally when people bitch about NYC in some kind of stereotypical way, they're complaining about Midtown. The majority of New Yorkers neither live in, work in, nor spend much time in Midtown Manhattan.

Nor they live in the Hudson waterfront,where the article locates the source of noise pollution. Since most of them live in the other boroughs, I'm pretty sure there are things with more impact to increase the quality of living...

I think if you follow the thread you'll see that I was responding to ilyanep's derisive comment about NYC as a whole being somehow unworthy of improvement.

Yes, the article refers to something that affects a relatively small number of New Yorkers.

yeah, I expanding on what you said, not arguing against it :)

I've stayed in Downtown Manhattan several times and I haven't heard helicopter noise, but I have heard sirens and honking horns throughout the night. It didn't bother me much; I have a reasonably high noise tolerance and I pretty much expect that out of being inside a dense city. This is why the shrill tone of "the tourists are ruining our city" in the article falls flat to me.

It sounds like you live in NYC. Do the helicopters tend to bother you?

I live in NYC, but not in Manhattan.

Yes, helicopters fairly regularly fly over where I live. They can be very loud.

So people who live in cities have no right to have some quality of life; they deserve the noise pollution on top of the air pollution.

I responded to a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11015522

Is tourist helicopters really the biggest source of noise problems for you in the city? Why not instead focus on reducing the number of honking cars that drive by you?

This seems to be a completely different line of argument than the parent.

Yeah, I'm surprised you can hear them over the general din of the city.

Persistent aircraft noise is horrible. I don't have experience of NYC, but the flight path to London Heathrow descends over a swath of west London, and I imagine persistent helicopter noise to be worse.

When I worked in London, my office was very close to the flightpath for LHR. Aircraft were at 580m overhead (according to FlightRadar24.com) about every 90 seconds all day. If the noise stopped (wind in the "wrong" direction) it felt like a huge stress just disappearing. Pretty much the same effect as an unexpected sunny day in winter :-)

https://www.flightradar24.com/51.5,-0.31/12 (note that LHR's night flight restrictions are from 23:30-06:00 UTC, but replaying from earlier in the day doesn't work for me: https://www.flightradar24.com/2016-01-31/09:00/12x/51.5,-0.3... )

Recording ambient sound in Greenwich Park (sometimes binaurally) has made me appreciate just how much air traffic noise there is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com