NoiseNet is based in sunny South-East Queensland, Australia, and all our devices are manufactured by our team in a suburb of Brisbane called Fortitude Valley (known by locals as just The Valley). The Valley is most iconically known as Brisbane’s nightlife district, zoned by the council to hold all the nightclubs, live music venues, restaurants, and other entertainment that’s open until the early hours. But in the past few years, more and more residential buildings have cropped up in the suburb, leading to a new front in the War On Noise for Brisbane’s local council. Residents want to get a good night’s sleep, while business owners say that residents should have known what they were signing up for, and reserve their right to produce noise within the district. So what can the Brisbane council do to effectively mediate the situation, while developing regulations that will help all parties achieve the outcomes they want in the future? Well, we have a few ideas.
What Do The Residents Want?
Like those living in any other suburb across the globe, Fortitude Valley residents want a peaceful night’s sleep. Excessive noise that disrupts rest can lead to poor mental and physical health, with causations found leading to stress, anger, hypertension, and even diabetes. Poor health can also lead to poor productivity, causing local workplaces to also experience knock-on effects.
Additionally, Valley residents want predictability. Knowing when noise is coming and how loud it will be means they can adapt and adjust their lives to match their environment. With venues operating on variable schedules and relying on residents to check when events are on, as well as having inconsistent noise levels when events are on, residents aren’t able to build the consistency they want.
Ultimately, Fortitude Valley residents, like anyone, want to live happy, healthy, predictable, and productive lives in the homes they can afford.
What Do The Business Owners Want?
John Collins, former bassist of popular Australian band Powderfinger and owner of multiple large venues within Fortitude Valley, has been outspoken about the issue of noise complaints. In an interview with Nine News, he stated that residents should "know what's going on" when they move to the area, and that these complaints are becoming a real issue for businesses operating legally. "We have people living in apartments next door to the Fortitude Music Hall and we get a lot of complaints and for us, it's a bit ridiculous," he said. "It's like moving next to an airport runway and complaining about the planes."
But what does he want councils to do about the flood of complaints? "If we can just ask the council and the state governments to work a little bit closer together in these areas so that there's a real easy mechanism of understanding how noise is calculated and how it's run, I think we'd all be better off," Collins said. He wants clearer communications between business owners and councils in regards to noise limits, clearer processes for how complaints are assessed, and stronger regulations for residential spaces within the district to protect against noise.
So What Can Be Done?
Modern technologies like NoiseNet are the perfect solution for all three sides of this war on noise. Residents want peace, business owners want to operate cleanly and avoid fines, and council wants to resolve noise complaints and reduce officer workloads. The simple answer from us would be for the Brisbane City Council to adopt NoiseNet into their workflows and automate the noise complaints process.
But does that really make every party happy? For business owners and council officers, it can provide clear data on noise breaches that will streamline communications and enforcement. But for residents, it’s only going to tell them what they already know: there is noise. To solve the residents’ problems, the Council will need to go further and implement strong new regulations around building codes for noiseproofing within the nightlife district. NoiseNet can help the Council inform and enforce this, like we’re doing with the City of Singapore, but the decision to protect Fortitude Valley residents from the effects of noise will need to come from a place of high authority.
NoiseNet was designed to help governments protect their residents from the negative effects of noise, but when those residents are housed in a dedicated nightlife district the situation becomes messy. However, reducing the workload of the Council’s noise enforcement officers and letting them focus on actively crafting regulations that will benefit the residents and the business owners, instead of resolving individual complaints one-by-one, is vital to the continued health and growth of everyone within Fortitude Valley. With NoiseNet, they can do exactly that. If you’re a party within this front of the war on noise, reach out to us at go.noisenet.com to see how we can help.
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