Shared walls are terrible 95% of the time. No respite from people if you have to hear people 24/7.
Coughing. Children mewling. Coughing. TV. TV ads. Throat clearing. Other people’s music. Coughing.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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Sounds like the builder cheaping out. I live in an apartment and we have never heard anything through the walls. If the neighbor yells, like actually screams, we can hear it through the door. I do think the doors could be heavier.
Too true. I had relatives sell parts of their building off as condos. Fully soundproofed. Nice places. One guy tore out all his floor sound proofing during an aesthetic floor renovation. Then sued after because he didn’t like the new noise.
This. The only time I hear anything through the shared wall is kids running up and down the stairs. Even yelling barely comes through and you need your side to be very quiet to hear it.
I almost never hear my neighbors.
I'd rather hear some noise and live in a walkable area than have silence and live in a car-hell cultural void
Idk. There’s something about a place so quiet you can hear goats in the distance, on occasion, and deer, chewing.
Sure. But I don't want to live there full time. I want to be able to walk to the bar, take a bus to the show, and so on.
Honestly, the distant sounds of humans can also be comforting in a white noise kind of way. Sometimes I think about how they're all part of someone's life story.
Not the government's place to be banning that for people.
No. But it is a miserable way to live, under constant barrage of stress.
Better than homelessness.
That's an incredibly privileged POV to hold.
Sounds like terribly thin walls. I live in a densely packed apartment complex, and on most days the worst I have to deal with is the sound of kids playing in the little courtyard area the complex is built around. I barely hear anything from my neighbors, and even then it's usually through the door, not the walls.
My apartment is so quiet. Like, yeah, I can hear the neighbours drilling but that can't be helped. When I close the windows, I barely hear anything from outside. But of course if you're talking about the most affordable kind of construction, noise isolation will definitely suffer.
I live in attached housing but in a fairly suburban area and by far the biggest source of noise are the vehicles belonging to single family houses. Like, nothing else even comes close and I've never once heard someone else's TV over the racket from the road. The detached houses next to my complex seemingly all have trucks and motorcycles that they rev at all hours.
The worst are tho lifted trucks that feel the need to “punch it” for brief moments on 25mph streets.
Here is a good peertube video I just watched on the same topic: https://video.canadiancivil.com/w/kyTV9jbx7ereGmzUFXGmBJ
Everyone loves the idea of super duper dense housing until they actually have to live there.
I love it. My entire life I lived in the country and suburbia. I have lived in a city the last few years, I can bike most places, take transit to the rest of them, I rent a car share when I want one(I don't own one), and I have 4 grocery stores within a 5 minute walk.
I can also bike most places and there's a bus stop 10 meters away from my house. I don't need to rent a car because I can afford one from not spending 90% of my income on housing :D
That sounds dope. Ha, I'll agree my housing isn't cheap and I miss having my own shop, but the community machine shop is better stocked then mine ever was. I can afford a car, I'm just trying to live without one. I will never miss a daily commute in a car.
You live in the city. You sleep in your home. This is what suburbanites don't understand. When you actually live someplace where there are things to do, the idea of wanting a bunch of extra air to lord over starts to feel a little bit silly.
How arrogant lmao. Typical city rat who thinks nothing happens outside of their concrete hellscape. You know nothing about where I live.
There's plenty of things I can do here with the added bonus of not having to deal with shit neighbors.
Great, don't live there then. More super dense housing for me!