Construction noise yay!!
No actually I really mean that! Not being sarcastic! This is good construction. It’s a house being built on the lot next to me — A lot that has been vacant for a long time.
I live in a dense historic neighborhood of a city. 1/10-acre lots. Every time I see a vacant lot, my thought is the same: This vacant lot needs to be a house, an apartment building, a public fruit forest, or a stormwater sponge / wildflower meadow.
For some years now, I have been hating the noise of loud lawn appliances of city contractors hired to keep the grass buzzcut on that empty lot. What a waste of resources. Plus compromising heat mitigation and stormwater sponge capacity.
By the way, the construction noise is loud, as one expects construction noise to be. They’re cutting into concrete for utilities and such.Interestingly enough, it’s NOT louder than those industrial edgers and ride-on mowers and leaf-blowers. That should really give us pause, when our landscaping is that noisy (and fume-producing).
It’s really ironic that respectability politics nudged cottage businesses out of neighborhoods because they were “too noisy” or whatever. (Or maybe not so ironic.) And meanwhile we have these giant tanklike machines rolling around the neighborhood like a grascist brigade, conscripted to stamp out nature’s life and color.
And meanwhile we need another flood study … NOT!!
So anyway — YAY construction noise! Actually doing something, pun intended, constructive!
Every empty lot that gets filled in an old dense urban area makes it more likely that we will see growth of a healthy shopping street nearby. Our Main Street is showing signs of trying to revitalize, with year-round businesses as opposed to just itinerant festival vendors, and I am all about it!
(And yeah, I am not a fan of construction when it involves flattening forests and leveling wetlands for suburban sprawl.)
On a related note, several families with children have bought houses in the neighborhood in the past couple of years. That’s always a healthy sign. I was able to introduce some of the families to each other earlier this summer. It was totally the highlight of my week.