How much new construction is happening in NYC? Interestingly, the vast majority of the spray foams we make are used in suburban and exurban areas, but that's where people are building homes.
It's actually a plague, that's how much construction. Lots of culturally relevant areas with low-rise buildings are being encroached upon landlords that sell one building or two, where you now have enough area to build sky scraper mega condo's that stick out like a sore thumb. The whole ordeal is quite a serious matter with residents and such where whole neighborhoods are being wiped out due to gentrification and such.
Like imagine any cozy Austrian-Hungarian empire styled EU city perhaps, and then imagine sky scrapers popping up next to such an aesthetic. Just a violation of anything sane people would consider, well.. sane.
I remember reading something about effective noise isolation standards in Swedish construction - could our Swedish members confirm or deny?
My place in NYC is a solid old prewar, and isn't too bad, except for two things - windows are useless against the boom-boom cars waiting at the light eleven floors below, and worse I think, is that the building itself allows remodels that include in-wall speakers. I think it's nuts to allow noise-makers to be inserted into the very walls that are supposed to suppress transmission between apartments.
The windows you see on many of the existing buildings (90%+ pre-war of course), all use the worst window system I could possible imagine. When I was in Europe, I couldn't believe how much of an idiotic set of building and construction standards exist in supposedly the "Financial Capital of the World".
In-Wall speakers should be banned in such buildings. Newer constructions though (hard to say, due to a bevy of different takes on construction) could be done well possibly, but who knows.
The best you can get I believe is (for some unfortunate people) that live near train tracks and highways, is like some large panel in front of the building to supposedly eat up some of the noise. But of course this crazy solution is only required in a city where lunatics thought it was a good idea to build housing next to such traffic areas.