City street
I enjoy living in the city. I enjoy having two big bay windows that look out over Pine Street and let in copious amounts of light. But there is a downside: street noise. We’re lucky. We live on the downhill slope of a one-way street in a fairly residential neighborhood. There’s not much people noise, but when the light turns green at the crest of the hill before our block, a peloton of cars whooshes by, intermingled with the occasional squeal of a cab’s brakes. There’s also the twice weekly garbage collection that sounds like a wrecking crew and the hospital deliveries next door that block off a lane of traffic, creating a chain reaction of sudden lane changes and honking cars. It’s a symphony really. It’s also why I wear earplugs to sleep.
This post originally appeared on White Noise Lounge.
Cities were by and large built before the advent of diesel trucks, heavy traffic, trash compactors, etc. As it is today, they are completely unlivable. Suburbs are also unlivable due to the neccesity of driving everywhere, traffic, general ugliness, chain stores, etc. Perhaps if we banned all private vehicles and internal combustion engines and switched to electric trollies and delivery vehicles, life would be worth living again. Sadly, however, global warmning will probably kill us all before things ever come to that.
Wow, that’s mighty depressing. I’ve read of some pretty unlivable accounts of the “modern,” turn of the century city though.
Well, you may *think* cities are completely unliveable, but since most of the world’s population lives in a city, evidence would suggest that they ARE liveable!