My Ph.D. dissertation presents a cultural history of anti-noise movements and legislation in New York City. In the dissertation, I examine three distinct periods of anti-noise activism: (a) the mid-1930s, when, under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the City of New York declared a “war on noise” that led to its first noise ordinance; (b) the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a major revision of this ordinance under Mayor John Lindsay led to the passage of a comprehensive noise code in 1972, and, most recently, (c) the early 2000s, which saw a revival of anti-noise activism under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the subsequent adoption of a new noise code in 2005.
It is my contention that the heightened concern with noise that characterizes each of these periods mirrors broader social anxieties about the disorganization of urban space. In each case, noise is associated with moments of spatial instability that are catalyzed by waves of deindustrialization and globalization, changing patterns of immigration, and currents of urban decline and revitalization, which disrupt existing configurations of land use, and, by extension, the ways in which urban space is used by different racial, ethnic, and class communities. My research shows that organized efforts to control noise correspond with changes in housing forms, neighbourhood organization, and zoning laws, and, therefore, that accounting for the spatial dimensions of noise is an essential step toward deepening our understanding of urban sound cultures.
To this end, my project is informed by the work of sound scholars who have approached noise as an object of critical social inquiry, including Emily Thompson, Karin Bijsterveld, and John Picker. Similarly, my analytical perspective is drawn from theorists whose work interrogates the cultural production of the senses and of sensibility, chief among them Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias, and Jacques Attali. Ultimately, I hope that my work will serve as a bridge between the emerging communications field of sound studies and those of urban history and sociology, and that my findings will suggest future paths of interdisciplinary inquiry.
