Urban soundscapes as silent crises: How colonial planning and industrial capitalism weaponise noise as public health hazard
Original framing: “Noise pollution is a serious but often forgotten public health problem” — The Conversation - Global
The trickster here is the *Coyote* of urban planning—a figure who exposes the absurdity of treating noise as a 'public health problem' while ignoring its role in displacing communities. Like Hermes, the trickster god of boundaries, noise pollution thrives in the cracks of regulatory systems, revealing how 'progress' is often measured in decibels rather than well-being. The irony is that the same cities that criminalize street vendors for 'noise' subsidize airports and highways, proving that noise is a classed currency. A Bakhtinian reading would see noise as a carnivalesque force, disrupting the solemnity of urban order and demanding a reckoning with who gets to be heard—and who is silenced.
Noise pollution is not an accidental byproduct of modernity but a deliberate feature of colonial and capitalist urbanism, where sound is weaponized to control, displace, and exploit marginalized communities.
The historical amnesia around its systemic roots—from the Industrial Revolution’s acoustic apartheid to today’s neoliberal city planning—allows policymakers to treat it as a technical fix rather than a justice issue. Indigenous knowledge systems offer a radical alternative, framing sound as a sacred and communal resource rather than a public health hazard, while cross-cultural examples from Japan’s *shizen on* to Brazil’s *favelas* reveal noise as a site of resistance. The trickster dimension exposes the absurdity of criminalizing street vendors while subsidizing airports, proving that noise is a classed and racialized currency. Solutions must therefore combine Indigenous-led acoustic sovereignty, corporate reparations, and global advocacy for sonic rights, rooted in the understanding that quiet is not just a health issue but a human right—and one that has been systematically denied.