As in "free-will" not to live in any (western?) city where 7am is noise go-time, regardless of real life statistics and local cultural differences?
I personally think these society-wide policies should reflect the realities of the population. Which often means reviewing them every once in a while to see if it still makes sense.
Far too much gov policy is fire-and-forget and obsessed with forever adding new things.
In my perfect world at least 50% of time should be spent reviewing and tweaking existing policy.
What’s helped me A LOT is sleeping ear plugs (I use macks silicon) and a face mask. Absolute game changers. My room mates can be watching TV in the living room beside me and I fall right asleep
Me too! Done it for years now and my watch vibrates as an alarm clock so that problem was solved.
People need showing how to wear them properly, really just read the instructions on the packet but so many people insert them haphazardly then say they don’t work or they fall out.
> any (western?) city where 7am is noise go-time, regardless of real life statistics and local cultural differences?
This is an interesting comment to me. San Francisco is really, really loud -- the biggest offender, when I was there, was near-daily sirens from (I believe) fire trucks.
But this is not a necessary aspect of living in a city. I often did wake up early in Shanghai, but that was because the sun came up at 4 am. Noise wasn't much of an issue during the ambiguous times. (Before firecrackers/fireworks were outlawed, they were common, but they were more of an afternoon thing.)
> But this is not a necessary aspect of living in a city
Ding ding, we have a winner.
Around here, if you complain about noise, you'll just be told "It's a city, it's noisy, deal with it! If you don't like it, move to the suburbs!". Which is kind of a silly suggestion: I've lived in the suburbs and kids having pool parties were a lot noisier than anything I've seen in a city. You'd have to be in the middle of a forest or something to not have to worry about human noise. In cities, suburbs, whatever, noise is a lot more cultural, and what people consider okay or not.
Sure, some level of cars/traffic will just happen. Other things like construction can be done in a lot of ways (some cities require plans on how they will minimize inconvenience to neighbors. Others are free for all). Backup alarms seem like a necessary evil, but I'm told in London they're not really a thing. People screaming at 2am is just about enforcement and cultural norms.
Some cities are loud. Other, bigger cities aren't.
> As in "free-will" not to live in any (western?) city where 7am is noise go-time, regardless of real life statistics and local cultural differences?
You must live in a different west than I do, because although there are sometimes noisy works in my cities (I've mostly lived in France and Belgium, but my year in Montreal wasn't different on this aspect actually) these are only punctual occurrences, and even in my latest house, where there have been buildings being built in my street for two years, it's only been noisy in the morning a couple weeks at most over this time.
I'm more inconvenienced by regular automobile traffic, which isn't limited to special hours, motorcycles can speed down the street and wake us up at any time of the night.
This is where it's all about "dumb luck". Unless you live in the middle nowhere with no neighbors for miles around, it's all about pure luck. I've stayed in midtown Manhattan for long stretches with little to no issue. I've stayed in the suburbs with only a single neighbor and it was hell.
There's been construction around me for the last decade. Most of the projects have been fine. The current one is managed by the devil himself and making everyone miserable. It's just luck. That's the problem.
