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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

I mean, this is easily fixed by having insulated walls, which are common in new buildings both for privacy and thermal insulation.

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Sorta but not really.

For one, which large cities in NA have any of that? They've got buildings that are not new all over.

Also, what is "new"? I've lived in buildings built in the last 10-15 years that were definitely still paper thin.

Heck we have several tens of meters between us and the neighbors house and we can hear them sometimes.

The other thing is for example balconies. There's not a thermal or insulated wall new building thing in the world that is gonna save you from your downstairs neighbor chain smoking on the balcony all hours of the day. You can't sit outside in the afternoon or on the weekend enjoying life. You can't sleep with the window open (fresh cool air required for proper sleep).

At least because you live in a city without cars you can have the window open during the night without noise pollution, right? We'll sorta because the neighborhood youth is out three stories below, gathering and having "fun" while you are trying to get the baby go to sleep before you yourself pass out from exhaustion. All the while annoying the elderly couple three balconies over with baby cries yourself.

So there are two solutions to the noise problem, better sound isolation or putting dwellings further apart. Why have you decided that one solution is an obvious winner over the other? I really think you need to inspect your own assumptions.

You are conveniently ignoring the parts of my post that have no solution in sound insulation at all: fresh air in both window and balcony and smell (which in my example isn't just fish smell like in sibling posts but actually carcinogenic as well).

Look I don't mind if you want to live with those things. No issues at all. If you love it, go for it.

Just don't make me do it.

And yes I've lived in properly built concrete apartments where I did not hear my neighbors at all and I had no balcony and I was able to open my windows without issue. Not in NA and I had one of the very luckily located apartments out of like 100 in that building.

I've also lived in concrete apartments with a balcony and all the problems I described earlier. Never again as long as I can help it.

The examples they gave really can't be mitigated with insulation, unless you want to turn all these apartments into isolated bubbles, completely cut off from the environment. I mean you could probably do that, no balconies, no windows. I think you would be surprised at how far sound can travel through steel and concrete.

As for putting dwelling further apart, that's why we have the suburbs.

Why have you decided that the other is the winner?

When Boeing or Airbus announce a new airplane, they come up with all sorts of luxurious concepts that would make air travel less miserable if not enjoyable. We all know damn well that the airlines aren't going to do any of that except maybe for first class. Housing is the same. Cheap out on everything, pack 'em in, profit. Then when there's a big fire or it all falls down, close up and start again under a different name.

For some years we lived in a rowhouse development about a mile outside the Washington, DC, beltway. It would be difficult to overstate the general shoddiness of the construction, which was from the early 1980s. But with the firewalls, we rarely heard the neighbors--we could just hear one household's TV from a corner of the basement. Now, there were a handful of times, averaging perhaps every other year, when somebody would have a loud late party.

I don't think it's that easy because I've literally never found an apartment with it.

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