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NYPRESS.COM • THE LARGEST PAPER ON THE EAST SIDE • AUGUST 1, 2013
East Side No Longer Quietest Neighborhood Maloney to MTA: Have a Plan to Complete Subway Second Avenue subway construction increases noise on East Side By Katya Johns
W
ith the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Park season now behind us, it could seem like an interminable wait before the next season of free concerts, but fear not, because there is a public program that will continue to provide surround-sound music all year round: it’s the New York Cacophonic, brought to you by people like you. From the 2 AM pub crawlers or jackhammering construction crew, to the steamrolling garbage trucks, shell-shocking sirens, rumbling subways, and jingling food carts, everyone, including the dog, is faithfully playing their part in the orchestra to maintain our world-class reputation as the “City that never sleeps,” a.k.a., the “City that never shuts up.” Noise, especially when it’s coming from all directions, might seem like an impossible thing to calculate and control. But for the past few years the City of New York has attempted to do just that – preparing and publicizing records of the annual noise complaints waged, organized by location and type. The 20 megabyte excel file would have gone virtually unnoticed, however, were it not for a freelance graphic designer who specializes in mapping data. Karl Sluis, who is based in Brooklyn, has taken the government’s information and mapped it onto a plan of the city, producing both a visually stunning cartogram
and a tangible piece of evidence for uptowners to use against their Polar opposites. Thankfully, Sluis had more irenic intentions than creating a civil war in Manhattan. “I had no agenda,” he said. “Having lived in New York for only three years, it was an opportunity to take a close look at the city’s different patterns and to make connections.” The map shows that, while the noise in New York might seem as ubiquitous and constant as air (or rather, pollution), there are certain seasons and areas, where it swells the most. Summer, with its euphonious combination of “Mister Softee” trucks, whirring air conditioners, street fairs, outdoor dining, and tourist mobs, wins the cake for loudest season. The months from May to July consistently receive nearly double the number of noise complaints than the rest of the year. It seems noise is the only thing that doesn’t slow down in the summer. However, it does travel to popular destinations. Downtown, with the possible exception of Hamilton Heights, a neighborhood near West 145th Street, has the noisiest spots in the city (wow, nobody saw that coming). More interestingly, thanks to the city’s detailed categorization of the noises and to Sluis’ expert visual encoding work, it is possible to see how Downtown’s noise compares to other regions: The Village is second to only Harlem in loud partying – a major complaint - but loud people and loud talking (a hazy distinction) are not as problematic if still most prominent there, especially near Wall Street and the Smith Houses, a public housing development on the Lower East Side. Surprisingly, construction, even with the Continued on page 15
Construction impact on neighborhood still an issue By Daniel Fitzsimmons “Moses was in the desert for 40 years because he didn’t have a plan,” said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-12) at a press conference she called to address the Second Avenue subway project. “We want to make sure that the MTA has a plan to complete this project and they deserve credit for managing to keep both the budget and the completion dates steady over the last four years, that is an improvement.” Maloney, a former grade-school teacher, called the press
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