One of the most easily refuted myths that noise denialists propagate to try to dismiss concerns about excessive sound levels is the claim that they‘re somehow new, and arise from recent trends such as gentrification or short-term phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic.1
A quick Google search clearly shows that urban noise is one of the oldest public-policy issues in human history — as indicated by the chronological span of noise-abatement efforts (see grey box below) — to say nothing of federal and municipal policy initiatives in more recent decades.
In fact, noise has been a broad public concern in both the U.S. — and Providence itself — for more than half a century, as chronicled by ongoing local media coverage of the issue over the last 50 years, which serves as the basis for the PVD noise-policy timeline (below the grey box).
Noise is Not a ‘New‘ Public-Policy Issue
6th century B.C. — First purported noise regulation: The council of the province of Sybaris, a Greek colony in the Aegean region, decrees that potters, tinsmiths, and other tradesmen must live outside the city walls due to the amount of noise they make. (It also bans roosters for similar reasons.)
45 B.C. — First vehicle-noise regulation: To reduce daytime noise, Julius Caesar decrees limits on when wagons can be driven on the streets of Rome after sunrise.
1595 — London by-law passed that prohibits “sudden outcry… in the still of the night, as [well as] making any affray, or [a man] beating his wife or servant, singing, or reveling in his house, to the disturbance of his neighbors.” (For context, Roger Williams founds Providence about 40 years later.)
1787 — America’s “founding fathers,” gathering in Philadelphia to craft the U.S. Constitution, have dirt spread on the cobblestone streets outside the building, to prevent the noise of passing carriages from disrupting their work.
1831 — The first authoritative reference to noise as a public health and labor issue: Dr. John Fosbroke, writing in the British medical journal The Lancet, states that “blacksmiths’ deafness is a consequence of [their] employment.”
1890s — The world’s first Society for the Suppression of Noise is formed in London. Its principal target is the newly-invented motor-vehicle horn.
1929–1930 — The first scientific environmental-noise survey is conducted, in New York City.
1936 — First comprehensive New York City noise code, which includes a prohibition on “prolonged and unreasonable blowing of a horn.”
1957 — The Chicago Zoning Ordinance is the first noise regulation in the world to specify maximum volume levels.
1960 — The UK’s Noise Abatement Act establishes noise as statutory nuisance for the first time, allowing it to be addressed by the country’s Public Health Act of 1936.
1970 — The U.S. Congress passes the federal Clean Air Act, landmark anti-pollution legislation that includes noise as one of its primary components.
1972 — U.S. Congress passes the Noise Control Act, to establish “a national policy to promote an environment for all Americans free from noise that jeopardizes their health and welfare.”
1978 — Congress passes the Quiet Communities Act, which (among other things) directed the federal government to develop studies, programs, and materials to support effective state and local government noise-abatement and control programs.
Noise Is Not a “New” Issue in Providence2
1969 — The Providence City Council passes a noise ordinance prohibiting “unnecessary noises or sounds by means of the human voice, or by any other means or methods which are physically annoying to persons, or which are so harsh, or so prolonged or unnatural or unusual in their use, time, and place as to occasion physical discomfort, or which are injurious to the lives, health, peace and comfort of the inhabitants of the city.”
September 1985 — The Providence City Council drafts a new noise ordinance that includes prohibitions on playing loud stereos after 10:00 p.m., and operating cars with loud mufflers.
January 1988 — After a year of debate, the City Council approves an updated noise ordinance. The Providence Journal describes it as a “response to neighborhood complaints concerning blaring stereos, roaring motorcycles, and early-morning sounds from construction projects, such as jackhammers.”
June 1994 — The Providence Police receive four noise meters, with eight more due to arrive, and trains dozens of officers to calibrate and use them, in response to what then-Mayor Buddy Cianci describes as “noise pollution [emanating] from car radios, large hand-carried radios, barking dogs, loud parties, and the like.” The mayor goes on to say:
“As the warm months get under way, the Providence Police Department must deal with great numbers of calls regarding excessive noise in our neighborhoods,” Cianci said. “With the windows of our homes and cars open to the warm air, we want to be assured that the city will remain pleasant and peaceful during the summer months.”
— Providence Journal (June 6, 1994)
July 1995 — Complaints about noise outnumber all others in the city, according to several members of the Providence City Council, while the police say they are issuing dozens of tickets a day to motorists who violate the city’s noise ordinance.
Joining Councilmembers DiRuzzo (Ward 15) and Nolan (Ward 9) in a plea for more enforcement of the ordinance are fellow Councilmembers DeLuca (Ward 6), Igliozzi (Ward 7), and Young (Ward 11). The police respond by issuing even more citations for noise violations:
“At Atlantic Avenue and Mitchell Street, two Providence officers were so busy that at least a half dozen motorists — with radios blaring — were able to get by without being pulled over because [the patrolmen] were too busy writing tickets for other motorists. Residents crowded around, applauding the officers. A man said, ‘I wish you guys could do this here for a couple of hours every day. This is great’.”
— Providence Journal (July 10, 1995)
September 1998 — PVD City Council member Joseph DeLuca (Ward 6) asks the city’s legal department to prepare an ordinance prohibiting drivers “from using car horns as door bells,” saying his constituents are fed up with motorists who repeatedly blow their horns outside of houses to get the attention of people inside.
July 1999 — The Providence City Council revises the noise ordinance to clarify that “any person, including a police officer, may be a complainant for the purpose of instituting action for any violation” of the noise ordinance (Sec. 16–109). It also removes time in jail as a potential penalty for noise offenses.
May 12, 2000 — An op-ed by retired Municipal Court Judge Keven McKenna notes that “in Providence neighborhoods, there is a daily rash of house invasions by noise marauders driving motor-vehicles blasting … music from over-powered, specially-constructed-and-installed car sound-systems purchased from local electronic-product stores. These vehicles contain woofers and sound boosters that produce noise in excess of that from jet planes flying overhead.”
May 19, 2000 — Rhode Island Rep. Joanne Giannini and Sen. Catherine Graziano, both representing Providence, say noise emanating from car stereo systems has reached intolerable levels in the state, and especially in the city. “The outrageously loud noise pollution is destroying the quality of life in our neighborhoods,“ Giannini says. “The music coming from some of these cars is so loud I can feel my house shake when they drive by.” [25 years later, this is still a regular occurrence.]
They propose two bills specifically targeting car-stereo systems. One would declare stereos that can be heard more than 25 feet away — and even closer if they can be heard inside a home or business — a health hazard and public nuisance, and authorize the police to tow the vehicle to a repair shop to have the sound system removed. The second bill would prohibit businesses from selling car-stereo systems that exceed 86 decibels, and regulate the sale of car stereo amplifiers.
January 2002 — RI state Rep. Joanne Giannini (D-Providence) introduces the Neighborhood Improvement Act to address residents’ complaints about litter, public drinking, and over-amplified car stereo systems. In addition to declaring stereos that that can be heard inside buildings 20 feet away a public nuisance, it would create a legislative committee on vehicle noise pollution to study laws designed to curb excessive noise and report back to the General Assembly.
September 2004 — A Providence Journal editorial observes that “motorcycle noise trashes the tranquillity of neighborhoods across the region. Police efforts to monitor noise and crack down when it rises above legal levels don’t work. A more effective approach is required.” It goes on to say:
“Providence Mayor Cicilline and the City Council know that residents of many of the city’s neighborhoods — not just College Hill — have lost patience with the city’s ineffective response to this problem. Most people have no objection to bikers gathering on Thayer Street, or anywhere else; it is the noise many of the riders make on their way to and from their gatherings that sets people off. It’s time for all communities to take stern action against motorcycle noise.”
2009–2015 — The Providence Journal’s coverage of noise-related issues drops precipitously, from an average of about 400 articles per year referencing noise to approximately 200 in the same interval.
Either the city suddenly got much quieter from one year to the next — which seems unlikely, given the lack of decisive action on the issue under Mayors Cicilline and Taveras — or perhaps the Journal decided its readers had abruptly stopped caring about it (also unlikely, for the reason noted above).
The most probable explanation is that lay-offs in the ProJo’s newsroom forced it to reduce coverage of a wide range of issues, including noise.2
September 2016 — In a scathing report to the Providence City Council, former RI Attorney General Jeffrey Pine says the city’s Board of Licenses, which oversees commercial venues with entertainment licenses to play amplified music, does not operate “at an acceptable or required standard” and needs to substantially change how it does its job — including a “substandard” effort to collect fines.
June 2020 — The Providence Police and Fire Departments, and the Rhode Island State Fire Marshal’s Office, organize a taskforce to respond to increasing complaints about illegal fireworks in the city.
April 2021 — Citing the public-health effects of noise from illegal modified mufflers, over-amplified stereos, gas-fueled leafblowers, illegal fireworks, and unregistered ATVs — and its disproportionate impact on “vulnerable populations and neighborhoods” — the City Council unanimously passes a resolution calling on Mayor Elorza to commission an independent panel or consultant to develop a plan to address noise pollution. The mayor never publicly acknowledges the resolution nor does anything to respond to it.
November 2021 — The City Council’s Ordinance Committee holds a public hearing on a proposal to limit noise from gas-powered leafblowers to 65 decibels and prohibit their use from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 a.m. The ordinance is never brought up for a vote.
Fall 2022 — Brett Smiley, a former chief of staff for Mayor Jorge “What Noise?” Elorza, runs for mayor on a platform emphasizing residents’ demands for improved quality of life in the city, including reducing excessive noise. Based on their responses to a survey of the three mayoral candidates, the Noise Project splits its endorsement between Smiley and a City Council member.
January 2023 — Smiley is sworn in as mayor and announces his first initiative to address noise: deploying hand-held sound meters to measure noise levels, which harkens back nearly 30 years to Mayor Buddy Cianci’s acquisition of sound-level meters in June 1994 (click to see description above).
January 2024 — After a full year in office, Mayor Smiley announces his second major noise-policy initiative: He expresses an interest in deploying noise cameras to address rampant vehicle noise in Providence, following similar efforts in Newport, RI. The city solicitor’s office, led by Elorza holdover Jeff Dana (whom Smiley re-appointed) apparently tells him doing so requires a change in state law.
Yet despite having helped moved major pieces of legislation through the RI General Assembly in his capacity as former Gov. Gina Raimondo’s chief of staff — and the fact that Assembly policy already supports such technology — Smiley is somehow unable to get the relevant Assembly committee to even vote on the bill (much less pass it), and lacking a contingency plan, his noise-camera initiative is further delayed.
Early 2025 — The city solicitor apparently reverses his previous legal opinion 180°, saying the city actually can deploy noise cameras without any change in RI law. No explanation is given for the legal U-turn, or why Newport was able to deploy noise cameras more than a year before Providence without any new RI legislation. (Local media remain consistently incurious about either question.)
Nov. 2025 — An ordinance to regulate gas-fueled leafblowers passes the full City Council. Despite being drafted by Environment Committee chair Sue AnderBois, and citing noise and other toxic air pollution as a threat to public health, the ordinance does nothing whatsoever until 2028, delays any action on commercial or residential gas-leafblower use until 2030, and does‘t finally end it until 2033.
Shortly after the ordinance is passed, AnderBois announces she is running for lieutenant governor.
Late 2025 — Smiley announces the city intends to first deploy a noise-camera pilot program (i.e., one that doesn’t issue citations for sound violations) by mid-2026, the middle of his fourth year as mayor, conveniently late enough in his first term to spare his re-election campaign any disgruntled constituents who potentially would have been issued citations if the program had begun earlier.
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1 The claim (including by some city officials) that excessive noise only became an issue when the relative quiet during COVID-19 pandemic offered a stark contrast to “noise as usual” is belied by decades of complaints and official responses — including new ordinances — seeking to curtail the wide variety of noise sources in the city that preceded the pandemic by more than 50 years.
The fact that many noise denialists weren’t even born when Providence introduced major noise-abatement policies may explain their self-serving misinformation that the issue is “new,” when in fact it’s only new to them.
2 The historical information in the city’s noise-abatement timeline is sourced from the archives of the Providence Journal.
3 The drop also roughly coincided with the administration of Mayor Angel Taveras, who was elected in 2010 and not known for vigorous enforcement. A subsequent rebound in the Journal’s noise coverage during Jorge Elorza’s first term indicates that the issue remained a public concern — as well as indicating a lack of meaningful enforcement under the new mayor.