Traffic noise hurts children's brains

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240621-how-traffic-noise-pollution-harms-childrens-health-and-development

by rntn • 2 years ago

170 136 2 years ago

"The guidelines don't [mention] fluctuations and peaks. Every time there is a noise peak, it is a distraction which can affect children's attention [span] and working memory,"

This is the worst part, I think. Rail and aircraft are at least predictable and, presumably, no louder than they have to be. But all it takes is one asshole with a loud car or motorbike and hundreds or even thousands of people are disturbed. Why are these bastards allowed to continue with ever louder motors? How do people live with it? Do they not realise that it could be quiet? This is something we could choose to have quite easily.

rustcleaner5• 2 years ago

My proposed fix is to make speeding ticket funds NOT EVER go to local governments, pass vehicle noise limits comparable to last decade's new vehicles stock (with fat paycheck busting fines), pass every cop a handheld combination laser range finder/parabolic decibel meter/video camera enforcement device/"gun," and make the fines go totally to local government. 3rd time or intentional over-100 decibel should be crusher (with no loan discharge) for the car and five years in the clink for felony disturbing the peace.

No more loud fucklechucks! :^)

rustcleaner5• 2 years ago

Oh and motorcycles at full rev must be made as quiet as a VW TDI. Thank Harley Davidson and his customers!

ZoomerCretin2• 2 years ago

Why should speeding ticket funds not go to local governments? Noise may be damaging, but to a much lower degree than a violent death by car crash which speed limits reduce.

erikaww3• 2 years ago

Why the crusher? Just repo it or take all the expensive parts out. Then give that money to schools or use it to fund putting out cameras to automate traffic enforcement

idunnoman12224• 2 years ago

Yeah that will be popular

ChainOfFools8• 2 years ago

got my vote! Except maybe the jail part, but I know you're probably being a little bit hyperbolic

spinach• 2 years ago

Also why are lawn mowers so loud and not made to be quieter in some way? Why does everyone need to cut their lawn in the first place?

idunnoman12224• 2 years ago

Electric lawn mowers exist

throwaway7ahgb5• 2 years ago

Why does everyone need to cut their lawn in the first place?

Because they want to? It's amazing how informative and insightful the HN crowd can be, however as most of the crowd seems to live in large cities there is intolerance to rural living.

akira2501• 2 years ago

From the Barcelona study linked in the article:

"Conclusions We observed that exposure to road traffic noise at school, but not at home, was associated with slower development of working memory, complex working memory, and attention in schoolchildren over 1 year. Associations with noise fluctuation indicators were more evident than with average noise levels in classrooms."

So, at the very least, the title of the original article does not seem justified. In fact the whole article comes off like a bad internet argument, tons of links that aren't understood, and the whole thing is designed to reach a pretermined conclusion, which is, of course:

"Car-free zones The best way to protect children from excessive noise is by reducing traffic around schools, says Foraster. "

I mean. Why not just sound proof class rooms? Seems way easier than entirely reengineering traffic in a dense urban environment. This really feels like "think of the kids!" now applied to traffic.

rustcleaner5• 2 years ago

You just know this is sponsored Walkable City™ SEO-slop.

lovethevoid• 2 years ago

Because it’s not just class rooms, although those are places you want them to be at their peak. It’s just the easiest to consistently test.

Additionally, with how severely under funded education is, you’re not going to get much effective sound proofing. Most classrooms can’t even afford regular maintenance.

xnyan• 2 years ago

We observed that exposure to road traffic noise at school, but not at home, was associated with slower development of working memory, complex working memory, and attention in schoolchildren over 1 year

Pretend I'm dumb, why is this not a bad thing?

Why not just sound proof class rooms? Seems way easier than entirely reengineering traffic in a dense urban environment.

I see it completely the other way. Reductions in the maximum allowed speed in the direct area around the school to archive the target noise maximum would be far more efficient than sound mitigation for the school.

jajko• 2 years ago

I have even better idea, since your doesn't cover biggest noise polluters IMHO - have a technical check on the car/bike that includes noise levels above certain threshold. Now I realize there may be corner cases and so on, but in general this would work wonders and so far I see 0 being done there. The thing is, certain cars and many motorbikes simply can't be quiet regardless of rpms, even in 30kmh they wake many people up through closed window.

As somebody who lived just next to very busy street for few years, there are 2, or maybe 3 main noise pollutants in the order of intensity: 1) ambulances & police, they are really properly mental level and they don't care even on completely empty 3am streets, if I don't cover my ears when they pass me it physically hurts, even with my subpar hearing of higher frequencies; 2) motorbikes like choppers by default, and all tuned rest, aka Akrapovic and similar mods should be banned in inner cities, permanently, 24/7. And 3) sports cars obviously, but they posed the least problem even in uber rich place like Geneva where seeing a Ferrari or McLaren is not unusual, and nobody looks at Porsche or below. This goes also for performance variants of ie BMW, Mercs or Audis too in lesser way.

karaterobot2• 2 years ago

This article definitely flipped my "let's assume this is bullshit until proven otherwise" bit. That bit really ought to be on by default, come to think of it.

I think about this quote when reading articles like this (to say nothing of the research it draws on):

The best way to identify sketchy scientific claims is by their level of abstraction.... if a new paper claims that attractive people are more (or less) generous than ugly people, I would be highly suspicious. “Generosity” is a very abstract and nebulous quality, and I would want to know how it was measured...The profound abstractions of everyday life—happiness, relationships, sleep, nutrition, motivation, pain, belonging—are the concepts most vulnerable to scientific abuse. (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-trust-undermines-scienc...)

The phrase "hurts children's brains" seems almost ludicrously abstract to me, so it's a little suspicious from the get go.

Then I get to their examples. The example of a train track literally running next to a classroom is one thing—I can see that being a problem—but it's a bit different than being next to a city street, which is where the article immediately pivots. Is the average classroom so loud that people physically cannot concentrate? Quoting studies that say that loud classrooms affect student performance doesn't demonstrate that most classrooms are too loud to concentrate, and that anything needs to be done about it. And even if classrooms in Barcelona are all too loud to concentrate, that says nothing about classrooms anywhere else—not even anywhere else in Spain, let alone the entire world. Blegh.

kiba3• 2 years ago

Noise pollution affecting children(or adults) in negatives ways is not an exactly an original claim that the paper make nor is it the first one to say so.

It would be like a paper claiming that exercise is good for you, which is heavily supported by robust evidence and mountain of papers.

kiba3• 2 years ago

Car dependency and car related infrastructure are enormously expensive to society. Think of every parking lots needed for people to park their car, motor accident, tire, noise, CO2 pollution, materials needed for repaving and repairing road damage, etc.

Soundproofing sounds cheaper, but it's just another additional cost imposed by cars.

The sooner we are able to walk or cycle or use public transit, the better off we are collectively for many reasons.

throwaway7ahgb5• 2 years ago

Did you read the article, the first 3 paragraphs are about public transportation being too loud.

t-writescode• 2 years ago

Two of the best parts, to me, about electric cars are:

1) lower pollution where people live, so you can go for runs and such without breathing in a bunch of noxious gas

2) how much quieter inner city walking will become. It can’t come fast enough!

fire_lake• 2 years ago

Big improvements, but keep in mind that air and tyre resistance are the loudest aspects of driving at even moderate speeds.

alan-hn• 2 years ago

And that pollution of tire degradation is one of the biggest sources of particles from cars

pwatsonwailes• 2 years ago

This. People always underestimate how much noise rolling resistance of tyres plays in the sound profile of traffic. Electric cars are worse under 50mph, basically because they're heavier.

jlund-molfese• 2 years ago

Maybe inside of a regular electric car, but the worst noise pollution in cities comes from cars and motorcycles with modified exhaust and incessant honking. Cars are loud and that's a problem by itself, but a car with a bad driver is exponentially worse than one with a normal driver.

ravetcofx• 2 years ago

Yup,Electric cars aren't quieter at all compared to movement I.C.E cars. Speeds need to be lowered to 35km/hr or lower.

jameshart• 2 years ago

In residential and downtown areas, the sound is going to be dominated by engine idling, pulling away, and low speed cruising. It's ridiculous to argue that electric motors aren't a massive improvement in all of these cases.

npteljes• 2 years ago

Must really depend on the speed, because the experience I have with ICE vs electric at Europe city speeds, electric vehicles seem practically silent.

Theodores2• 2 years ago

I have been a proponent of electric cars but the way it has panned out has made me less enthusiastic. Really it is just about showing you have a six figure salary and nothing to do with being kind to the planet.

My new phrase is 'active travel' and this means walking, cycling or using a wheelchair. The opposite of 'active travel' is car dependency.

For the car dependent person, walking is something you do after driving to the car park in the beauty spot, to get the boots out the back of the car and do 'hiking' as a leisure exercise, to not actually do anything of purpose. Cycling is the same, a bicycle is just a toy for leisure, with a piece of polystyrene having to be worn on the head.

In the world of 'active travel' the walk is to the shops or to see a friend. It is the same with cycling, rather than pointlessly ride on a 'toy', it is a trip to work or the shops, a journey of purpose.

With 'active travel' there is community. You meet people old and new on the journeys you take and you can stop and talk. Car dependent people can honk their horns and wave, but that is quite primitive communication compared to saying hello. Just today I met someone on the canal towpath that is cycling coast to coast, having met him a couple of days ago too. It was great to see him again, and that was just one interaction on my journey. I had to get somewhere so I did not stop to talk for too long, but you just don't have those sorts of interactions if trapped in a tin box, electric or otherwise. Yes there might be cup holders, air conditioning and massaging heated seats, but I prefer the community aspect of 'active travel'.

When people go car dependent they take themselves out of being part of the community.

A huge part of this is noise levels. Sometimes I use turn by turn directions on my phone, and, if I am on towpaths, the volume of 'after 200 yards, turn right' is embarrassingly loud. Yet, if I have the same volume and I am on a normal road, I make wrong turns because the noise of cars, even at a low speed on quiet roads, is too loud for me to hear the turn by turn directions.

Only if spending hours on canal towpaths and former railway tracks turned into cycle paths so you realise how absurd the noise of car dependency is.

Another phrase is 'livable neighbourhoods' and the idea is to put active travel first so there is a return to community and health. Sadly, electric cars are a folly. I don't hate on them, I have just discovered 'active travel'.

Incidentally, 'active travel' depends on health, and that means either being young or eating for nutrition. You can't walk your way out of a bad diet, or cycle out of it. There is a whole lot we need to work out and electric cars, sadly, are not it, not even for people that live in the countryside, have a dozen kids and a job a hundred miles away.

hooverd3• 2 years ago

I feel like too many "active travel" proponents live somewhere that's perpetually 65 and sunny.

Edit: I'm a bike commuter. I just like arriving at my destination unsoaked in sweat.

itsoktocry2• 2 years ago

The fact that you feel like you can't have human interaction or community unless you're walking somewhere sounds like a skill issue on your part.

I happily drive to join friends and family all over the place.

ipqk5• 2 years ago

Sorry, but most car pollution is from the tires/tyres, not the exhaust. Electric cars don't solve that, and may even make it worse because they're heavier.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...

phatfish• 2 years ago

The parent was worried about "noxious gas", not rubber particles. Cars with an ICE have tires as well, unfortunately.

hristov2• 2 years ago

Your link does not say what you purport it to say. It limits things to particle pollution. It makes sense that tires will create more particle pollution, but gasoline creates a lot of gas pollution as well.

silisili• 2 years ago

Most road noise and even pollution comes from tires, not a gas burning engine. I lived about a half mile from an xway once. You'd hear an occasional jake brake or loud motorcycle, but by far the most annoying thing was the constant whooshing noises of normal cars passing by.

kiba3• 2 years ago

The best car is actually no car. No EV, not just ICE means no noise or tire pollution.

maskros2• 2 years ago

Then you haven't heard electric cars running at low speed or put in reverse. Try to chill near any space where EVs frequent (like near a parking lot or train station with lots of traffic) and it's a constant source of artificial speaker noise:

WHIRR! WHINE! HUM! LOOK AT ME I'M ELECTRIC WITH A BIG SPEAKER! WHINE! WHIRR!

BING, BING, BING, BING, BING! LOOK OUT HERE I COME IN REVERSE! BING! (The Ioniq 5 is a particularly bad offender here ... the reversing bing can be heard multiple blocks away).

I wish EV auto-makers would turn the default warning noise levels their cars emit WAY THE FUCK DOWN because it's seriously annoying! I get not wanting to startle pedestrians, but you don't have to alert the entire neighborhood...

nicoburns• 2 years ago

I wish EV auto-makers would turn the default warning noise levels their cars emit WAY THE FUCK DOWN because it's seriously annoying! I get not wanting to startle pedestrians, but you don't have to alert the entire neighborhood...

I'm pretty sure this is a legal requirement not something the EV manufacturers are choosing to do. Although I guess this may vary by juristiction.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF3• 2 years ago

It's cause otherwise "EVs are silently running over kids becomes another "we need incandescent traffic lights because for a couple weeks in winter LEDs don't melt snow"

lugoues• 2 years ago

The legislation requiring this is silly, are there any studies at all which shows it reduces harm... I couldn't find any. It would seem safer for children, and the population as a whole, if they banned vehicles which don't provide adequate front visibility. Maybe even require sensors that will prevent the vehicle from moving from a stop if something is detected in front.

jaredhallen• 2 years ago

I was part of a recent conversation about hijacking the speaker and making it play Ludacris - Move B** instead.

soperj• 2 years ago

As someone who bikes regularly, electric cars seem almost noisier than regular driving gas counter parts, I don't know if's because they're heavier or what, but when they're moving at regular traffic speeds, they are not remotely quiet.

kfarr• 2 years ago

Sometimes you can even feel bigger evs as vibration, they're like light duty trucks

oopsallmagic• 2 years ago

Adult brains, too. I appreciate the study, but this is one of those "yes, obviously" situations for anyone who has ever been outside amongst cars.

ZoomerCretin2• 2 years ago

It's one of those "yes, obviously" situations that are surprisingly controversial if you mention it in conversation. There are a lot of people (likely the already heavily hearing-damaged) that have zero problem with road noise and are very dismissive of any and all noise concerns.

brnt• 2 years ago

At soms point I realized people who think noise sensitivity is ridiculous are always either old, partied a lot or are hard of hearing through other means.

Yeah, of course problems you don't have seem silly. At least, for the minimally empathetic.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

That’s the best result for a study

james4k2• 2 years ago

We already know pollution from cars increases childhood asthma, and I imagine those pollutants could affect brain development as well.

Edit: Also I would be curious to know how dog barks affect children's brains. Of all the environmental noise, dogs are often the loudest and most jarring, anecdotally.

erikaww3• 2 years ago

Dogs barking cannot be worse than cars, especially compensators with the pop pop pop engines or tires screeching. Live right by a doggy daycare and several busy arterials

james4k2• 2 years ago

On average I agree. Dog noise doesn't carry nearly as far. But if you're neighbors with noisy dogs, it's probably at the top of your mind.

dagw• 2 years ago

right by a doggy daycare

Doggy daycares are generally run by people who love dogs and know how to work with them and make them behave. The problem dogs are the ones owned by people who don't care how they behave and just leave them outside and ignore them.

GoblinSlayer• 2 years ago

IME the loudest are bikes and metro (inside). There's an occasional mustang, but bikes are still louder.

obruchez2• 2 years ago

Motorcycles are absolutely the worst. Even when they drive as slow as possible, to make less noise, they're still noisier than some cars. This is insane. And what's frustrating is that this is considered a feature, not a bug. I don't know how we can get out of that particular culture. I'm not sure electric motorcycles would help at all.

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

This feels like a study with many confounding factors.

brikym• 2 years ago

It may not be noise causing all these things. It could be tyre dust or fumes or lack of exercise from driving everywhere or anxiety from being hit by a car. It still points a big finger at car culture being bad.

idunnoman12224• 2 years ago

Not really, probably rich kids have schools that are quieter

DangitBobby• 2 years ago

The article starts with the story of a public school next to a subway line that has measurably lower test scores for children in parts of the school where the noise of the subway is higher.

Imagine my surprise when the CTA at the end was about removing car traffic noise! I guess "cities too fucking loud for healthy child development" doesn't exactly match the current cultural zeitgeist. Not particularly surprising to find yet another HN comments section talking about how cars are evil, though.

throwaway7ahgb5• 2 years ago

Did anyone read the article or is this just turning into /r/fuckcars?

The first 3 paragraphs are about SUBWAY cars (aka public transportation) being too loud. The article also talks about other forms of transportation being too loud.

majormajor• 2 years ago

So beyond "make the schools themselves" quieter, some analysis of "traffic noise where the kids live" vs "non-traffic noise" would be useful here.

There is a lot in the article about negative effects of all sorts of unwanted noise.

But it seems like it would be just as easy to go to "this is why we need well-built schools and well-insulated cars and big parking lots and sprawling low-density housing so the kids can have quiet at home too" as to "get rid of cars" from this.

ehnto4• 2 years ago

What non traffic noise? I am struggling to come up with a single thing that could be consistently as loud as a road and actually be likely near a school. Whereas cars are made basically mandatory, so will always be near schools.

throwaway7ahgb5• 2 years ago

Did anyone read the article or is this just turning into /r/fuckcars?

The first 3 paragraphs are about SUBWAY cars (aka public transportation) being too loud. The article also talks about other forms of transportation being too loud.

schmookeeg• 2 years ago

I wonder how soon we'll be charging those "crackle map" exhaust hoonigans with assault on the un-thought-of children.

ChainOfFools8• 2 years ago

Not soon enough, and even though I'm a parent frankly it's for my own sanity as much as for that of my kids.

I have no sympathy, in fact negative sympathy shading into election year issue territory, for the small but growing minority who feel entitled to make all us living in a quarter mile radius of their incredibly irrelevant presense get rudely disrupted by their deliberately obnoxious ear-splitting noise machine, _inside our own homes_ when trying to take a nap, have a conversation, read a story or do anything at a normal indoor volume. Why is society decided to accept this Behavior in a way that they would never accept, say, someone marching down the street tossing firecrackers into the air at all hours of the day?

The answer is simply that it's too impractical to catch and penalize people who get a petty sadistic power thrill out of their consequence-free enshittification the ambient public space.

I welcome the growing use of noise maps as evaluation layers in the real estate and rental markets, only by putting hard numbers on the degradation of value that this causes, particularly for homeowners, will any measures with actual teeth be implemented to push back on it.

stctw• 2 years ago

I am with you 100%. Imagine, if you would, that you lived in an apartment, and that you spent $2,000 on a stereo system, and that you turned up the volume so high that people in vehicles, driving by on the nearby street, could feel the sound waves inside their vehicles from a quarter-mile away.

What would happen if you did that? Well, obviously, someone would call the police, and they would bang on your door, and they would warn or cite you, and you'd have to pay a fine or appear in court. On top of that, you'd probably get an angry call from your landlord, and if you ever did it again, you'd probably be evicted. It would be absurdly anti-social behavior that's prohibited by existing laws and ordinances.

But, somehow, as you said, society tolerates the very same behavior when the source is inside a vehicle rolling around on wheels. And yet, if you think about it, as that vehicles rolls from one end of town to another, down busy streets, past residences and businesses and hospitals, the number of people needlessly antagonized and harmed by the noise must number in the thousands each day.

"But it's only for a few seconds," the other side will say. And yet it happens over, and over, and over again, tens of times a day, day after day, waking people up too early in the morning, disturbing them while they live and work at home, and keeping them up at night.

And the purpose of this noise? Is it a necessary by-product of the vehicle's natural purpose? Of course not. The purpose is solely, completely, 100%, and only, self-aggrandizement of the operator; to intentionally antagonize innocent strangers who can't even be seen by the antagonist. If anyone doubts this, one should look at a few advertisements offering these audio systems for sale. "DISTURB YOUR NEIGHBORS" is a common theme, even an explicit one. The noise is entirely artificial, with no reasonable, ethical, or moral purpose.

To derive pleasure from the mere intuition that someone, somewhere is being antagonized by one's own actions is surely a sociopathic, anti-social, anti-societal behavior. We hear the cries to legalize some drugs because "they don't harm anyone but the user," but where are the cries to de-legalize this widely harmful behavior?

Well, FWIW, I've been told by local cops that the behavior is already illegal in my area, but when they've cited offenders, their cases have been dismissed by local judges, so now they don't bother. Why? Who knows, but when I consider the local businesses that sell these stereo systems, I can only imagine their reaction to a campaign to "lower the boom" by ticketing offenders, and I wonder what influence they may have on local government.

Put that together with increased violence in general, and the increased risk of a confrontation at any traffic stop, and I can imagine that cops consider carefully whether to initiate one for various behaviors.

And we hear these cries to make people live closer together, in smaller dwellings. No, I want to be further apart, with more buffer. I am very careful not to impose my by-products on my neighbors, but not all of them are so considerate.

/rant (I so rarely see like-minded people talking about this issue)

davemp2• 2 years ago

The answer is simply that it's too impractical to catch and penalize people who get a petty sadistic power thrill out of their consequence-free enshittification the ambient public space.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to hook up a phased array microphone / camera and require inspection for cars that trigger it. Gathering the political will otoh…

Fradow• 2 years ago

Step 1: Make it illegal (if it isn't already) to remove pollution / noise reduction features from cars.

Step 2: Enforce a yearly or bi-yearly tech inspection that checks the pollution / noise against the standard the car was made for (so old cars can still run on older pollution standards)

There, problem solved. Seems like government over-reach? Well, that's how it is in several developed countries in Europe.

That doesn't stop 100% of people from modifying their cars, but it'll quickly become very very niche, because consequences for doing that are too high for most enthusiasts. The main consequence are (1) if police checks and the pollution / noise reduction features are not there, you can be ordered to get your car back to stock in quick order, or in the worst case the car will be destroyed, and (2) in case of a crash, your insurance drops you because your car is not road-legal.

As with all things, there must be a political will to do that, and some people will fight it very hard.

LightHugger• 2 years ago

I drove through a school the other day. The school was actually part of a 6 lane highway, like, it was built over it, the highway kinda formed a tunnel through a piece of one of the school buildings which flanked both sides of the roadway.

Not really sure what's up with that, but holy fuck did i feel bad for those kids. Just one of those things that makes you go "the fuck is wrong with this country (it was in the US)".

MichaelRo• 2 years ago

I might be overly sensitive to car noise but I find revving engines extremely annoying. Fortunately (and by choice) I live in a relatively low traffic area, so at least at night it's got almost no traffic, but during the day it's got enough of it to force me to shut close the thermopane windows and doors AND turn on an electric fan heater without the heat, so the low frequency white noise it makes masks the occasional roaring of the car engine passing by.

Also it's not like all the cars, most cars pass by with their engine on idle so they make little noise. Every now and then (which by law of statistics translates to always, eventually after some time), some idiot accelerates aggressively when their clutch is disengaged, resulting in the engine squealing like a demented stuck pig and me almost getting a seizure out of stress.

And then there's the occasional SUV with tank tracks instead of tires (figuratively speaking, they have tires suitable for climbing muddy hills, not cruising through residential areas) which zooms around at 80Km/h, in this case can't hear the engine because the darn tracks make so much noise you can hear them from several blocks away.

Hate. Cars.

Also an unpopular opinion which will 100% guarantee I get fiercely downvoted: "they" should make gas prices not 10-20% but 4x - 8x higher. So the vast majority of the idiots would have to take the public transportation system instead of the current standard of 3 cars for a family of two and sitting in traffic for 90 minutes to make what would otherwise be a 20-30 minutes transit. Differential price for individual (luxury) transportation.

ptman• 2 years ago

Hate cars, but especially car noise. I find it fucking insane that we require quiet EVs to make engine noise. Drop the speed furthe instead. And people need to learn to watch for pedestrians. And pedestrians need to watch for cars, maybe get rid of the (noise cancelling) headphones

pmg101• 2 years ago

I agree with you about the disappointment. However I do also think EVs creep up on people and the stats bear this out - 3x more pedestrian collisions in urban areas EVs vs ICE.

The moment of maximum surprise for me is when a silent and stationary vehicle suddenly moves. I think EVs should have to clear their throats before moving forward.

seoulmetro• 2 years ago

Quiet EVs only make noise (not engine noise usually) at low speeds.

It's very annoying in cities like Seoul in Korea because the cars are louder than normal cars at low speeds and sound like UFOs, even at midnight.

simonebrunozzi• 2 years ago

In 2021 I decided to move from San Francisco to Venice, Italy - where obviously there are no cars.

People walk a lot more. The level of noise in this city is by far the weakest compared even to a small village town, because of lack of cars.

I love it here. It's only anecdotal, but I am sure that this positively affect many things in my life, including my stress levels and the quality of my sleep.

dddw• 2 years ago

That it is a walking/boating city is exactly what is so great about it. It's a great place to simply walk and get lost in the smaller streets until you find a grand canal. It surely has grown on me.

Traffic noise hurts children's brains

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