A sound solution?

Protecting residences from traffic noise is a positive goal for a community, but noise walls do not always make good neighbors. As planners look for ways to improve, avoid or even remove sound barriers, they confront professional assumptions as well as aesthetic and technical issues. The huge expans...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Planning 2001-04, Vol.67 (4), p.10
Main Author: Sorvig, Kim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Highway construction
Noise control
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Protecting residences from traffic noise is a positive goal for a community, but noise walls do not always make good neighbors. As planners look for ways to improve, avoid or even remove sound barriers, they confront professional assumptions as well as aesthetic and technical issues. The huge expanses of noise wall surface warrant quality design. But in most places, blank concrete walls are the rule. Appearance may be the most common complaint about noise walls, but technical issues are also an issue. Substitutes such as earth mounds, greenwalls, and rubberized pavement are alternatives to noise walls. To some progressive planners, noise walls represent a failure of policy and design that neither technical nor aesthetic improvements can fix. Many noise walls, like roads, result from lobbying by the construction industry. There is a growing demand that roads return to serving, rather than dominating, their communities.
ISSN:0001-2610
2162-4577