Quiet Ideas

We are collecting ideas for a quieter world. We include several here: for signs describing a quiet town or asking for quiet; ideas for quieter classrooms, quiet motoring/trailering and more.

Idea to achieve quieter homes

Fostering competition among communities (with some sort of "places rated" system) for the considerable noise-conscious segment of the "population-bulge cohort", who will be seeking good retirement homes, here is an idea:

* Set up a registry of families and individuals who would be prepared, perhaps with a one-year notice, to relocate and buy into a municipality with adequate and enforced noise ordinances, bylaws etc., or a private, planned development with adequate, enforced "CC&Rs".

* By keeping the project simple and secure (it would be a "junk mail" bonanza list), perhaps by only listing "Quiet Resident" at mailing addresses, I believe an unstoppable "vote with your feet" lobby could be assembled, which would turn the heads of development-starved communities across the country.

* It might be handled very cheaply via e-mail and e-mail addresses and, possibly, by enclosing a dollar to register and returning letters, once an appropriate community for a registrant has been identified.

* The hard part would be in dividing up / zoning the country, so that there would be meaningful choices to make by registrants (i.e. "alert me when a west-coastal community becomes available" or "...when an upper midwest community becomes available"), but not end up with more than approximately eight ways to sort everyone out. This zoning is where imaginative simplification counts. This is important from the standpoint of avoiding headaches and administrative overhead, but also for the sake of showing municipal councils and developers in these zones some attractively large numbers, respectively demand.

- By Craig Daniels

Municipal Welcome Signs (and warning signs)

Townhouse near 70th Avenue and Granville St., Vancouver

Sign posted on the exterior wall of a restaurant on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver

Fellow quiet questor John Morse sent photos from Albany, N.Y., where a series of signs warn motorcyclists of a city ordinance that forbids unnecessary noise.

Click here to see the series in larger images, along with Mr. Morse's comments.

What you can do

Suggest that your municipality post a sign at the entrance to town to the effect of:

Our Town is a Quiet Town Please Help Keep it Quiet!

or

Make it Quieter

Signs as reminders to bar patrons to respect neighbours.

Click to see larger image

Quiet in the Classroom

Art Class | Baucom Elementary School | Apex, North Carolina

The art teachers at this school know how important Quiet is in helping students stay focused.

Each chair in this room has been fitted with used tennis balls to eliminate scraping noise from chair movement. The result is a quieter classroom more conducive to learning and creative “flow.”

Quiet Motoring

Softride, Inc. provides towing accessories (hitches) that eliminate the clanking sound of typical trailer hitches.

Click here to see larger image

Mufffler shop reminds us of what mufflers are for

Click here to see larger image

Noise and Health, Thomas H. Fay, Editor, The New York Academy of Medicine, New York, New York, 1991.
This 120-page volume contains a wealth of information and references on the detrimental effects of noise on health, and rightly maintains that unwanted sound of whatever type and decibel level can adversely affect health.

— Noiseletter,
Fall 2002