Design
Where New Yorkers Can't Stand the Racket
A new map lets you analyze noise complaints in the Big Apple.
Traffic, neighbors, loudspeakers, jackhammers, vacuum cleaners, dump trucks, ice cream trucks, air compressors: It’s no secret that New Yorkers live with an endless array of noise.
But the city is not uniformly cacophonous, and New Yorkers do not uniformly respond to sound. Noise complaints placed to 311, the city’s non-emergency service hotline, vary a lot by noise source, time of year, hour of the day and neighborhood.