Our company recently underwent a major move, placing me and my staff on the side of a building that faces a large remodeling project across the street. As I type this, a backhoe with a very large jack-hammer attachment is working away at the crane base that once held a 14-story construction crane. This is directly below our single-paned windows, 11 stories down. The noise level is fairly loud, but more importantly, repetitive for awhile, disappears and comes back without warning. I would argue that the environment that it creates is a kin to a torture chamber, except instead of inflicting direct physical pain, it inflicts aural shock waves that cause mental anguish and thought deprivation.
Humans are a funny bunch. We actually tolerate a great deal of noise with some basic conditioning. Those of us who have lived in the city for a very long time are accustomed to the various noises that happen throughout any given day. Those who aren't, not surprisingly, find the city an unnecessarily noisy place that they cannot wait to get out of. Conversely, city dwellers often find they enjoy the quiet of the country for a bit, but find themselves longing for the hustle and bustle of the metropolis. Bottom line - the environment we are used to is the one that we are most comfortable.
City dwellers in Portland are fortunate in that we have strong building codes and noise laws that are mostly enforced. Construction is an amazingly powerful force, however. For whatever reason, we've decided that construction sites are not required to abide by noise ordinances. Why should we? They're only there for a little while and make a bunch of noise, dust, road closures and a host of other annoyances. When it's all said and done, you would hardly know they were there in the first place.
We need quiet or din to concentrate. By that, one can conclude that consistency and fluidity in the noise and its nature are important to enable humans to think clearly. Certainly there are exceptions, but I suspect they are far and few between. Consider that we do a lot of thinking when we're driving. Driving tends to be a noisy activity - the tires rolling along the pavement create a loud cabin, but its a consistent fluid noise. If you're on a noisy, rocky or aging roadway, you're going to be less likely to have the same quality of thought than if you were cruising down a freshly paved freeway.
To illustrate my point, try this - pick out two articles of similar length in your newspaper. Read one in a silent environment with no distractions and see how long it takes you to get through it and feel like you understood everything you have just read. Now, try the same thing with a different article. This time, however, turn your stereo up very loud with some heavy/death metal playing. Compare the time it takes to read, concentrate and understand the second article. They will likely be similar, but the second reading will have taken noticeably longer. If you consider that you were put to task to accomplish this, imagine if you weren't put to task and self-challenged to make it through that metal music and understand the article. You would have taken a lot longer to complete the task.
It is possible to concentrate in an environment with background noise, so long as it's consistent and smooth. What concerns me greatly is that we're building up and we're not addressing the issue of common respect among ourselves. There's little to keep a tenant on the top floor from annoying the one below them. More challenging and worrysome is the simple fact that our culture has a sadistic fascination with making people feel uncomfortable. This isn't conducive to living among each other in close proximity.
Gregsta'
