FEATURE ARTICLE
kind of pollution does not simply affect the natural environment but the human habitation itself. Urban living has become synonymous with diseases, and noise pollution particularly affects mental wellbeing, potentially creating anti-social behaviours. The present noise mitigation efforts are neither sufficient nor have effective implementation. Monitoring the levels of noise in large cities is a difficult task in itself and making people actually follow regulations is all the more difficult in which case the question becomes how exactly can we pin down the source of noise to counteract it. Just as the sense of hearing cannot be controlled, so also, it appears, does effective noise mitigation. As a result, it must be on our list of priorities. The noise levels prescribed for different zones in cities that developed organically has mixed
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CITY OBSERVER | June 2016
characteristics. In such instances there can be no one accepted level of noise - there are too many players to effectively come in the purview of a single blanket rule. Car ownership has been increasing year by year; their movement is not restricted to major roads, to avoid traffic delay people take detours through neighbourhoods totally destroying the character of community living. Such are the requirements for parking that there is little to no scope for open accessible public spaces for people. We need a healing environment for the sick but our hospitals are at the receiving end of noise from traffic movements. Parks or gardens provide a great buffer from the noise in the city, but it too has limitations. We cannot recreate an entire forest in the city to counter the effects of pollution, and after reaching its full limit natural environment itself starts degrading under the