The sound of cities, and what it says about your health and wealth
With COVID-19 quarantine, the air has been cleaner and the streets have an eerie stillness, but the light has never shone brighter on longstanding social, economic and racial inequality in our lives. The concept of noise in a city — and who gets the worst of it — is a direct reflection of those inequities. Matthew Braga, freelance writer on technology, science and culture, recently reported on this very concept: can it be this quiet for good? And quiet for whom? The answers to those questions are tied up in Toronto’s decades-long war against noise and the way it interweaves with class, privilege, race and power in this, and essentially, every city.
