Tuning In to a Happier City

Noise is an irritant of urban life. But there are ways to make it easier on the ears—and the psyche

- Feargus O’Sullivan

Before the pandemic, the London street where I live was a rare patch of calm in a noisy city. When the lockdowns of 2020 arrived, that situation flipped like a switch.

Riding into central London on my bike, I saw that many streets were deserted and quiet. My own road, by contrast, seemed to get much louder, even without the usual hum of cars and planes. It wasn’t just the weekly “clap for carers” session—when people applauded on doorsteps to show support for the National Health Service—or the occasional ambulance siren. With most residents now always at home in their 1920s row houses, I couldn’t help hearing a teenage boy screaming at his computer games beyond my living room wall, while our upstairs neighbors compensated for missed social opportunities by dancing drunkenly above our heads. Next door, two families grilled and played salsa music in their shared garden at what felt like eccentric hours.

Delivery drivers, busier with most stores closed, staged daily shout-offs as they struggled to pass on our narrow street, provoking its three new lockdown puppies (one of them mine) to bark and howl in chorus. The feral parakeets feasting on the cherry tree next door seemed to screech louder. Perhaps they were afraid of being upstaged.

With even backyard birdsong sounding newly abrasive, it dawned on me that mine might be a case of heightened sensitivity, as my ears tuned themselves to an acoustic environment newly stripped of the urban background hum.