By Jane Garcia

It has been quite a long time since the loudest noise in a city was the piercing “hear ye, hear ye” of the town crier. In modern cities like Melbourne, the mix of shops, restaurants, entertainment and an increasing inner-city population is forcing local councils to address the noise generated by all the activity.

“The city has evolved very differently over the last 10 to 15 years from being basically a business, 9 to 5 city to an on-going, lively city which is active 24 hours a day,” says Gary Singer, deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne City Council.

“There are a lot more residents, a lot more restaurants and more nightspots and we need to balance all these competing factors. They all create noise and we need to be able to make living environments and entertainment environments better so their sound doesn’t travel outside.”

In 2004, the council partnered with RMIT University’s Spacial Information Architectural Laboratory (SIAL) to conduct a community-based sound survey investigating the awareness and perceptions that people had toward typical sounds in the CBD. Noise complaints were previously the council’s only other source of information, but it felt there were other impacts that were not noticed in this form and wanted to access the wider community’s attitude to sound.

The CitySounds survey was innovative in that it used computer game technology to create virtual streetscapes and soundscapes representing areas throughout the Melbourne CBD. Some of the key findings were that about 70 per cent of respondents said sounds they heard in the CBD annoyed them maybe once or twice in an average day; despite this exposure nearly the same percentage said loud sounds did not motivate them to avoid parts of the CBD and about 72 per cent said noise levels in cafes influenced their decisions about where to eat in the CBD.

The council and its partner recently launched the next phase of CityScapes providing an online virtual apartment where architects, builders, developers and residents can experience the effect of different acoustic treatments designed to minimise noise.

“You can see what it effect it has on noise coming into your room if you do different window coverings, like put in double glazing or what happens if you change your doors. You can isolate each factor where noise comes in and what remedial action will fix it and make your area better,” Cr Singer said.

He said the council had a role as a leader in the community to make sure that its residents and our businesses had the best opportunities to co-habit together and it was constantly developing strategies between competing interests.

“Recently we developed a waste management strategy to reduce noise,” Cr Singer said. “Once the removal of waste was freed up, you had small lanes where you had six different waste companies come in to collect rubbish and they’d make a lot of noise and people who were sleeping at night would have a problem. We developed a strategy to manage the collection of waste materials from the city.”