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Comment by CamTin | Hacker News Reader

'Police now move people on at 23:00. Rubbish lorries, which had previously cleared up when the partygoers left in the early hours, have been rescheduled for the morning, and steps that provided seating for gatherers have now been filled with plant boxes'

OK fine about rescheduling the garbage trucks, but is this really a success? A vibrant public space has been neutered by more intrusive policing and architectural changes that encourage people to stay away? I'm somewhat sympathetic to the people in these apartments, but if this has been going on for 20 years (and why 20? why not 200?) then property values should already have adjusted. If you're living here, it's because you made the calculation about the noise and decided to rent or buy anyway, or else you didn't, and why is that the City of Barcelona's problem?

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> If you're living here, it's because you made the calculation about the noise and decided to rent or buy anyway

These plazas are commonly located in the old town, so a lot of inhabitants might have inherited the properties. Also, it's sometimes hard to judge how loud an area is really going to be before signing the contract - especially the night-life.

I recently rented a new apartment in a crowded street and while it was certainly a mistake to move here, I didn't expect it to be _that_ loud since when we were there for the apartment viewings there were also a lot of other interested parties and it was distracting from the street noise.

I really wish there would be a project to distribute those noise-tracking devices and make the realtime data available to the public. It would definitely influence buying/renting decisions and help for city planning as I think this serious problem is only tackled on the surface and it brings down quality of living.

Totally agree on making this kind of data better available. This way, everybody could have the city they want, with people segregating themselves into neighborhoods depending on the kind of night-life they are looking for.

It can indeed be hard to judge, and situations may change. Before moving to my current house I asked around and got the impression that it was fairly quiet late at night; this turned out to be mostly true. But, a new hotel was completed after I moved and it turns out that my street is the easiest route for drunken guests to take back to that hotel if they've been out on the town.

This is a fantastic idea and is badly needed in residential neighbourhoods of cities all around the world.

Possibly there's a simpler solution. A few years ago San Francisco passed a law requiring developers to notify potential residents if there is a nearby music venue, and also protecting those venues from nuisance lawsuits.[1] Perhaps that could serve as a model for public spaces as well.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-supes-back-music-...

I doubt it would work. Have you been to Barcelona? People party and make noise even without a music venue. Then there are concerts that get organized in squares. This one is easy to solve because it requires a permit from the city hall.

Yes I have been to Barcelona, but I think you misunderstood my point. The article is about a public space known as a regular gathering spot, not a one-off concert or party. That regularity is what makes it similar to a venue.

So keeping the noise down late at night now constitutes neutering a vibrant public space? Living in a city may require tolerating noise and crowds but it also requires being mindful of how your activities affect others.

"...steps that provided seating for gatherers have now been filled with plant boxes"

This is the real tragedy, since it is a change that doesn't apply only at night. It makes the square less valuable to people 24 hours a day.

It makes it less valuable to transients, and more valuable to the residents.

Transients and anybody who would like to be outside in the square, including residents who live near the square, but it's not like it's "their" square. It isn't a Costco parking lot in Fort Worth, it's a square in Barcelona. The whole point of it is to be an outdoor public space where people can congregate and enjoy themselves.

> The whole point of it is to be an outdoor public space where people can congregate and enjoy themselves.

People can! Following the law and how it relates to noise pollution. Rights are a balance.

Disclaimer: US citizen who has spent more than a few weeks in Barcelona, and has seen how people abuse the commons firsthand

Well, they can't, not on those steps, even if they are quiet as a fly in the middle of the day. That was the CamTin's point.

Must you be on the steps to enjoy the square?

"Here's a flat paved plaza. You cannot sit down. The cops will be by to kick you out at 11."

Sure, sounds like a lot of fun.

I don’t see be problem. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing.

Considering the Catalan like to eat dinner late, around 8-10PM. An after dinner stroll to the park is now out of the question. Could it be quieter, certainly. There is a technology available to help. Put up leafy trees or a large canvas canopy to muffle the noise.

Yeah, Americans really don’t like spending time in public spaces unless each person is individually enclosed in a hermetically sealed metal box on wheels.

As a result, places where humans regularly talk to each-other in public freak us out. Why won’t they stop abusing the commons like that?

Probably it is. I guess, in many parts of Europe, we're used to city space being usable by everyone for recreation, without wondering who owns any particular stretch of land and whether they'll want to kick us out.

Alas, this seems to be disappearing here too; cities are importing the strange habits of gated off neighbourhoods, and giving every possible public space to private owners, who destroy its utility by trying to make money off it.

Yes, it is a cultural thing.

Squares and parks are supposed to have people meeting and using the public space, not for making a space prettier or as a just a transient area, if that was the case then pedestrian streets would be better to make it denser while having the same features of meeting and traffic.

Benches, chairs, steps are necessary so people can sit relatively comfortably for some time while doing other activities, I don't understand how a flat, paved square is a good thing except for displaying flower beds.

> US citizen who has spent more than a few weeks in Barcelona ... seen how people abuse the commons firsthand

Aside from breaking the law, how does one abuse a common area?

Not implying this is what you’re saying, but I’ll never understand people who try to imply commons areas should only exist for the whims of certain classes of people.

I lived near a park in Minneapolis a few years back and one of my obnoxious neighbors were trying to get laws passed to change park rules because they didn’t like the large “poor looking” family who had a weekly cookout in the park on Sundays. She tried so hard to rally the neighborhood into joining her quest...

I kept asking her, “If you don’t like public areas, if you want to control who uses what and how they use it, why on earth would you move into a densely populated area, directly across the street from a public park?” I mean, it was a fairly pricey neighborhood so she had options, I’ll never understand why she didn’t move into one of those suburban neighborhoods with a homeowners association— those are tailor made for people who want to micromanage others and can’t handle living amongst the public. Like, stay out of cities if you’re this type of person...

The cities must apply the law. The law says you cannot make so much noise when people tries to rest. That's all. There are plenty of hours in the day to make noise without disturbing others and breaking laws.

Why has this abuse being running for 20 years? That's a good question. But if someone threw garbage on your property, your answer won't be that "property values should already have adjusted". You just call the police, don't you?

> There are plenty of hours in the day to make noise without disturbing others and breaking laws.

I really hate that attitude. Not everyone works, sleeps, awakes at the same time. People who work night shifts or are natural night owls should have just as much right to enjoy their hours of awakeness as anybody else. Why are the daylight hours ‘OK for noise’, yet the evenings aren’t?

I’m a natural night owl and sometimes get awoken early by rubbish trucks, or just noisy people, shouldn’t I have the same rights?

If you’re a light sleeper, get some ear plugs

If you want night parties, vote for it until it is allowed or get some isolated nightclubs. Status quo is that most people sleep at night (and mostly drunk if not) and that’s important. It is changeable, but not by simply ignoring laws and health orgs.

Earplugs don’t save from lowfreq noise that goes through walls, floors and beds almost intact. Disclosure: I’m sleeping from 5 to 10 times a week, not having any fixed time as a ‘morning’.

(edit: I often confuse disclaimer with disclosure)

> If you want night parties, vote for it until it is allowed

So, minority opinion should always be ignored?

> or get some isolated nightclubs.

One of the major problems in London in the past 5 years has been the smoking ban. So these nightclubs which were previously sealed now have people outside smoking, which has caused additional conflict. It's not as simple as isolating a club or bar.

> Status quo is that most people sleep at night (and mostly drunk if not)

Wow. So people awake are night are drunks? Fantastic. They're not awake for any other reason? Like they did a night shift and want to eat late? Or they want to go shopping when they're not at work? Or ... /* lists all the reasons people do stuff during the day */

This notion that we should be awake and work during the day and sleep during the night is one that's been forced upon us. If you look into the sleeping pattern of the middle ages you'd realise it wasn't always like this, and we're not all like that [1]

> Earplugs don’t save from lowfreq noise that goes through walls, floors and beds almost intact.

I've used earplugs when in places which are noisy, I have found they're absolutely fine for this purpose. It's usually mid and high pitched sounds that are more jarring if you're trying to sleep (the human voice). Things like music which is repetitive is quite easy to tune out because of its repetitive nature.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

>So, minority opinion should always be ignored?

Every minority should be satisfied, but not in the way that heavily affects majority, imo. Health and stress is not a someone’s joke.

>So people awake are night are drunks?

No. But at night you have a much higher probability to meet one who is drunk (from majority) and one is enough to disturb many. That’s what I meant trying to remain concise, sorry for this overstatement.

Unfortunately, any earplugs I tried didn’t stop lowfreq and I’m very sensitive to it (can’t sleep at all). Sleep patterns are a problem for me too, as I already mentioned. I didn’t downvote you (and it doesn’t mean anything since it’s probably emotional here), but at least you can see how much people are affected.

Edit: grammar

Basically, everyone would like the world to conveniently work well for their needs. On the one hand, you complain that you deserve the same right to quiet so your sleep isn't disturbed. On the other, you tell people "If you are a light sleeper, get ear plugs." You could get ear plugs. Though if that fixed everything, presumably you would not be here complaining.

There is a chronic issue that being part of a group, for example by living in a city, has benefits, but it also comes with friction. Trying to find best practices for reducing the problems without destroying the fundamental value of group association is always a struggle. One best practice is you try to arrange things to align with group norms so as to inconvenience the fewest people and the reality is that most people sleep at night and work or go to school during the day.

I will add that I tend to be a night owl.

> On the one hand, you complain that you deserve the same right to quiet so your sleep isn't disturbed. On the other, you tell people "If you are a light sleeper, get ear plugs."

I never said I deserve quiet, I pointed out the discrepancy. It's the sleeper that desires the quiet, but different people sleep different hours of the day, especially in a city. I don't write off to my local council every time I'm awoken at 8am by a rubbish truck, even if I'd only gone to bed a few hours before. Why should people who are awake at so-called 'normal hours' be afforded any additional sympathy? And why should their desires override others? What makes them special?

Are people who are awake through the night 'lesser people'? Or not as important in your world view?

If I can sleep through the daywalker's noise, then daywalkers can sleep thru the nightwalker's noise. And if not, then they're probably living in the wrong part of the city. I find it endlessly perplexing that people will move to places known for the nightlife and then start complaining about it once there.

They aren't "special." They are the majority.

I'm not arguing that night owls are lesser people. I'm just saying these sorts of conflicts are basically inescapable. They have existed as long as humans have and there is no magic wand solution.

Everyone would like the entire world to work well for them as an individual. Therein lies the rub. We would all like to be able to make noise when we feel like it and to have undisturbed sleep at will where other people are expected to be quiet during that time. The reality is we have two possible choices here:

1. A small number of very powerful people can impose their will on everyone else like that while the majority live in misery.

2. We struggle to find best practices that work reasonably well for as many people as possible.

The second scenario is what most modern cultures typically shoot for. Since night owls are in the minority, policies tend to favor day people.

In theory, we could insist everyone be quiet all the time. In practice, this interferes with industry, commercial, recreation and generally having a life. So in reality we need to demarcate times when an acceptable amount of noise can happen so life can happen.

There are no simple answers. It's a complicated problem.

I notice on your second point you didn't use the phrase "whilst the minority live in misery" like you did for your first point. Good attempt at making readers more sympathetic to your one sided argument. You say the minority here are not lesser people, but you write them off as irrelevant and we shouldn't even bother to look for a solution because the majority have decreed it, and therefore their problems or opinions are irrelevant.

If the majority decided to torture the minority, or enslave them, or segregate them, I assume you would consider that immoral, right? And that the majority shouldn't just have carte blanche to do whatever they like to the minority - democracy isn't about 'screwing the minority'.

So, if the sound does really make life "a misery" then isn't that accepting of the torturing of people who have to sleep during the day? Isn't that immoral? The majority inflicting torturous sound on the minority during their sleeping hours?

Or, is it actually the case that the sound isn't really that bad, and that we should all learn to be a bit more accommodating to the fact that in a city people live and work on different schedules, and that your nighttime hours are not sacred. And using your majority position to inflict your will on other people's waking hours just so you can enjoy your sleeping hours is unjustified.

If you live in a city, in an area that's known for it's nighttime scene, I don't see why you should have any special privileges. Just like I don't expect any special privileges because I often sleep the hours that many are awake.

but you write them off as irrelevant and we shouldn't even bother to look for a solution because the majority have decreed it

I said and did no such thing. I'm sorry you seem to be so angry about this, but I don't see any reason why I should be a target of that anger.

I don't intend to reply further to your comments here.

I am not angry at you or anybody else on here, sorry if you felt that way. I am arguing my point quite strongly because I have seen aspects of nighttime culture that I feel quite passionately about be destroyed/decimated by the gentrification wave in London.

For example, take a look at this google streetview link [1]. That is The Egg nightclub, it's on York Way in Central London. It was a very industrial area when the club was built. If you pan the camera around, you'll see the residential flats that have been built in the past few years. They are now trying to get the club shut down. There are two other ex-clubs in a 100 metre walk of that point that suffered a similar fate.

This is unacceptable in my opinion, and this is what bugs me about this nonacceptance of nighttime culture - especially in areas where it's often the cause for the regeneration of an area in the first place. Those things made the area cool, the gentrified move in, they kill it.

When I said you implied that we should "write them off as irrelevant and we shouldn't even bother to look for a solution because the majority have decreed it"

I was referring to this:

> In theory, we could insist everyone be quiet all the time. In practice, this interferes with industry, commercial, recreation and generally having a life.

Where you appear to state that industry, commercial, recreation and [day time people] having a life is more important than a sizeable minority of human being's quality-of-life. Now, maybe that was a leap too far, but the implication I got was that the majority are more important and that a subset of humanity is irrelevant and should basically be ignored, because finding a solution is too hard; or even just having a bit of understanding that people have different cycles rather than forcing their world to be shut down whilst they're awake, is too hard.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5417762,-0.125419,3a,75y,7...

If you have an agenda, some friendly advice: pick your battles and look for potential allies.

As stated above, I am also a night owl. This is a different comment by me criticizing how this was handled in this case:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17220149

But I don't even actually want to read your comment in full, much less check your links, because you have left repeated ugly personal attacks of me in specific, which is not a good faith argument and is not exactly how you "win friends and influence people."

Have a nice day and all that.

> repeated ugly personal attacks of me in specific

There aren't any repeated ugly personal attacks, there isn't a single personal attack as far as I can tell. Nor are my responses targeted at you, I have responded to a number of people in this thread. The closest thing I can see is where I picked up on your use of language likely to bias a reader's opinion, I never picked up or discussed any aspect of you or your person though, it was entirely on topic. If there is anything I am truly sorry, that really isn't me. My arguments were entirely in good faith.

Have a nice day yourself.

If you're living here, it's because you made the calculation about the noise and decided to rent or buy anyway, or else you didn't, and why is that the City of Barcelona's problem?

I lived in Barcelona for 5 years, and for the first 18 months my wife and I lived right by the Santa Maria del Mar, a church in a square that is one of the main tourist areas in Barcelona. Our neighbours in the building included an old couple (80's, probably) who had lived there forever, and a 92 year old lady who was born in the building. Our landlords had inherited the place from their parents, who had been there forever too. Barcelona is that sort of place, it has changed incredibly quickly - before the olympics in '92, apparently it was unsafe to walk around that area during the day, but in the last decade or so it's become super hip.

We didn't complain, we just moved, but I would absolutely support reducing the nightlife around that area - the noise was insane. And it was pretty much all caused by tourists, not locals, and Barcelona is on a big drive to prioritise the locals in general. Reducing the nightlife, or even just keeping the noise at night to reasonable levels, wouldn't make the space any less vibrant during the day or even at night at reasonable hours, and would give a lot of relief to residents.

I live on a noisy New York street. Replacing seating with potted plants appears, to me as well, a sloppy response to the problem. (Re-scheduling trash collection, on the other hand, was brilliant.)

Modern technology allows for acoustically isolating virtually any kind of housing. (Provided the windows are shut.) Acoustic retrofitting is expensive, but so is losing the tax revenue from a vibrant public space. A better solution would have involved reducing noise levels inside residents’ homes without smothering the plaza.

(Reminds me of a poster I saw at a club, once. Paraphrasing, “Al sees apartment. Al sees club. Al rents apartment. Al spends all his free time making noise complaints. Don’t be Al.”)

Does keeping your windows shut all the time in New York mean you have an air conditioner on all summer?

Could there be other problems with everyone using air conditioning all the time?

> windows shut all the time

Windows don’t need to be shut all the time. Just when I’m sleeping, or want some quiet. (I don’t live in an acoustically-isolated environment, either.)

(That said, I and most people I know in Manhattan run air conditioners more or less constantly, while we are in the apartment, all summer.)

> so is losing the tax revenue

If you take into account that most of the people sitting on the floor of the square bought their beers in the convenience store and probably paid less than one Euro for each of them, I don't think that the state will loose a massive amount of income via taxes.

On the other hand, I know that measuring everything by the economical peformance is a really common thing to do in the other side of the Atlantic, but the neigbours have the right to be able to sleep, even with the windows open. Those squares are not zoned as industrial area, so they are meant to be silent at night. By law.

100% agree with you. Often the reason people move in to these areas is the lively bustling local culture. Then the complaints come which sanitise the area, killing its spirit.

This has been happening a lot in London as the tide of gentrification washes in and sucks the life out of the local culture.

A really sad state of affairs

So you believe that local culture consist of a lot of people getting drunk and shouting?

This has nothing to do with gentrification. Most neighborhoods that suffer this problem are working or middle class. Try doing that in rich quarters and see what happens.

The problem started long ago, aprox. 30 years. You could open a "tavern" with very few permits needed (and limited hours) or you could open a "pub", that you must isolate and comply with many regulations, and you set your hours, no matter the council.

Guess what many did and got a quick buck. Authorities turned a blind eye for the sake of tourism. When hours are enforced, people just go shop strong alcohol and drink in the streets. That generated a very bad problem years ago and there is a law against that.

If you move in to a noisy/lively area and then start making noise complaints, then in my opinion you’re the one at fault. If this has been going on for 20 years then it can hardly be considered an ‘unknown’

> So you believe that local culture consist of a lot of people getting drunk and shouting?

Well done for reducing it with your prejudices, this is local cafe culture, which is very social. It isn’t only ‘being noisy and drunk’, that’s just a symptom. It clearly has a positive social cohesion story behind it too.

And what you deem to be culture may not be what others do. But regardless, it exists and was there before you. So, what right do you have to get rid of it?

Granted, if 100% of residents don’t want it, then that’s an argument to do something about it. But, a lot of the time it’s a handful of very vociferous residents that destroy what the majority want to keep.

If I moved to an area with a noisy local culture and found I couldn’t deal with it, I’d move; I wouldn’t try to bring an end to that culture.

I'm not reducing anything, that's exactly what people complains about.

You don't seem to understand that the locals are the people complaining, not the drunkards. The locals are people that are living there since forever and many of them can't choose to move.

The drinkers aren't locals. They very much care not to behave like that in their own neighborhoods so they go elsewhere to make noise.

> You don't seem to understand that the locals are the people complaining, not the drunkards. The locals are people that are living there since forever and many of them can't choose to move.

Can you provide evidence for your assertions? I see none of what you claim in the article. Are all locals complaining? Or a few of them? Have the locals really lived there forever? Where’s the proof?

Ever lasting life aside, I suspect you’re exaggerating and the vast majority will have moved there within the past 20 years.

And how do you know the drinkers aren’t locals? Have you met them? I note from your profile you’re not from the area, so how can you be so sure there aren’t any locals there?

How local do you need to be to be allowed to stay up late and talk in any particular area? Should they live on the same square? Or, within a few streets? Should there be special police officers checking how local you are?

But anyway, my comments were mostly about the general problem of conflict between day and night walkers, not just this specific incident.

>So you believe that local culture consist of a lot of people getting drunk and shouting?

Yes. Not exclusively so, but yes. Events where drinking and shouting happen (and/or is simply the point) are a large part of culture. It might not be my cup of tea but... http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/016/845/e9d...

This isn't a vibrant public space, it's just a space full of noisy foreign tourists who are making a racket while the locals are trying to sleep, because they have to go to work the next day.

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