Lens 5 of 5: the mix
Six kinds of noise, one hexagon grid. The obvious map, which sound wins each hexagon, is almost one colour. The interesting map asks a different question: which sound is unusually common here, compared with the city as a whole?
of hexagons: music wins
Loud music and parties make up of all noise incidents, and they are the most common sound in of the hexagons with enough data. Neighbours (banging, talking, television) take most of the rest. Painted this way, New York has one sound.
Colour: the class with the most incidents in each hexagon.
Divide each hexagon's share of a sound by the city's share, and colour it by the sound that stands out most, if any does. Construction and machines light up the office core of Manhattan and Long Island City. Vehicles trace the boulevards of eastern Queens. Helicopters hug the Hudson and the approach to JFK. Neighbours cluster in the big housing complexes: Parkchester, Midwood, Stuyvesant Town. Music, once it has to compete, retreats to the Bronx and central Brooklyn.
A sound counts as standing out when its share in the hexagon is at least 1.25 times its share citywide, at least 15% of the hexagon's incidents, and at least 10 incidents. Grey: nothing stands out.
Construction and machines: of all incidents, but in the Financial District and in East Midtown.
Brightness: the sound's share in the hexagon divided by its share citywide. White is four times the city rate or more.
helicopter incidents in 2023
Helicopter complaints were a rounding error until 2019: about a thousand a year. Then tourist and commuter flights multiplied, and so did the callers: in 2021, in 2023, still in 2025. The complaints land where the callers live, not where the aircraft fly: the Upper West Side alone filed , of everything reported there.
Helicopter incidents per year, 2015 to 2025.
The six classes are ours, built from the categories 311 offers a caller. "Music" covers a wedding and a car stereo; "neighbours" covers a footstep and a fight. A relative map also flatters rare sounds: a few barking dogs in a quiet suburb stand out more than a thousand parties in the Bronx. That is the last of the five. The same dots, five maps, and none of them is the whole city.
All five side by side