One of the myths that noise denialists try to propagate to fend off efforts to reduce excessive noise in Providence is that complaints about it are new, arising from recently arrived residents or short-term phenomena such as the COVID-19 pandemic or gentrification.1 In fact, noise has been an issue in the city for at least half a century, as evidenced by regular media coverage.2
Moreover, urban noise is one of the oldest public-policy issues in human history:
6th century B.C. — First known noise ordinance: The council of the province of Sybaris, a Greek colony in the Aegean region, decrees that potters, tinsmiths, and other tradesmen must live outside of the city walls due to the amount of noise they make. (It also bans roosters for similar reasons.)
1595 — A London by-law forbids any “sudden out-cry… in the still of the night, as making any affray, or [a man] beating his wife or servant, singing, or reveling in his house, to the disturbance of his neighbors.”
1787 — When America’s “founding fathers” gather in the Pennsylvania State House to craft the U.S. Constitution, they first spread dirt 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 issue: Dr. John Fosbroke, writing in the British medical journal The Lancet, states that “blacksmiths’ deafness is a consequence of 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.
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 dealt with under the country’s Public Health Act of 1936.
Noise Issues in Providence Are Not New
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 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, or the Journal decided readers had abruptly stopped caring about it (also unlikely), or newsroom lay-offs 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 or 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 centered around residents’ demands for improved quality of life in the city, including reducing excessive noise. His first policy initiative to address noise harkens back nearly 30 years to Buddy Cianci’s acquisition of sound-level meters in June 1994 (described above).
January 2024 — After a full year in office, Mayor Smiley announces his second major noise-policy initiative: 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 says 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 official Assembly policy already supports such technology — Smiley is unable to get the relevant committee to even bring the proposal up for a vote, and his noise-camera initiative goes back to the drawing board for another year. Meanwhile, Providence residents continue to endure the adverse effects of vehicle noise.
Early 2025 — Mayor Smiley intimates (but doesn’t formally announce) that the city can actually deploy noise cameras without a change in Rhode Island law, a 180° reversal of the legal basis the city solicitor previously offered. When questioned, he tells the Noise Project that he hopes to have them deployed by the end of the year. If that actually happens, it will have taken two years since he first proposed the idea to bring it to fruition.
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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 50 years or more. The fact that some noise denialists weren’t even born when Providence introduced major noise-abatement initiatives may explain their self-serving misinformation that the issue is new.
2 The information in the 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. A subsequent rebound in the Journal’s noise coverage during Mayor Jorge Elorza’s first term indicates that the issue remained a public concern — as well as indicating a lack of enforcement under the new mayor.