Responses

“[U]nnecessary, excessive, and offensive noise threatens the … constitutional rights of the citizens of the community to privacy and freedom from public nuisance, and is detrimental
to the health, comfort, safety, and welfare of the citizenry.”

— Providence municipal code (Chapter 16, Article III)

It goes without saying that Providence, like every other city in the world, cannot control the weather. But like most municipalities, it still expends tremendous effort to try mitigate the effects that weather has on the health, safety, and well-being of its residents — from clearing snow from the roads in the winter, to planting trees to provide shade from dangerous heat in the summer.

Yet at the same time, the city government largely ignores the sources and effects of excessive noise — over which it actually can exercise a great deal of control — on those same residents. Instead, and contrary to the policy declaration above, the mayor and City Council mostly leave noise abatement to the police department, which generally only responds retroactively to incidental complaints.1

Given that residents all over Providence have complained about noise for years, and yet it remains an ongoing issue, it’s clear the city government can and must do more to address the prevalence of excessive, unhealthy, and unnecessary noise — as other municipalities around the U.S. and the rest of the world routinely do. This includes:

  • Rejecting recursive noise-denialism that “cities are noisy,” which merely serves to perpetuate a dysfunctional and anti-social status quo, and declaring noise a threat to public health
  • Educating residents on the adverse health effects of noise, as the city and state do with other public health issues
  • Measuring noise levels to determine their severity, sources, and locations
  • Developing an official public policy to actively prevent noise by implementing basic proposals to proactively address rampant noise sources, including motor vehicles, commercial venues, and leafblowers
  • Analyzing its implementation of municipal noise policies and their effectiveness (or lack thereof) in reducing noise levels

If you’d like to volunteer to help reduce noise in Providence, please contact us or fill in our Volunteer form and we’ll respond shortly.

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1 Noise prevention simply does not exist in Providence.