urban studies

Here’s how city life is actually affecting your health

There is a truism, often bolstered by pseudoscience, that people in the country are healthier than people in the city. Certainly there are many health problems associated with the metropolis. But it turns out that urbanites are often in better shape and live longer than their rural counterparts. Most of our data on the health…

City Siren

The Outdoor Public Warning System siren at the corner of 21st Ave and Geary in San Francisco.

iPad Busker

Push-Button Music

Megaphones, Parabolic Concrete, and Waterfalls

We were confronted on the street corner by an evangelical wielding a large, battery-powered megaphone. This being a soundwalk, the appearance on this very cold day of the screaming man in the t-shirt was something akin to an act of serendipity. As he burdened us with the fear of eternal damnation, all I could think…

The Past Isn’t Dead. It Isn’t Even Mute. (via Paleofuture)

It’s been over a decade since MIT published The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 by Emily Thompson, who won a MacArthur grant a few years later. Paleofuture’s Matt Novak recently shared news of the Roaring Twenties soundscape project, which Thompson developed with Scott Mahoy. There’s something deliriously…