29 Jul What’s Your Community’s Soundscore?

If you live in a major metro area, I’m sure you’ve heard of WalkScore, a website that helps you find a walkable place to live by measuring the walkability of any address and assigning it a score between 0 and 100.

Walk Score’s mission is to promote walkable neighborhoods, one of the simplest and best solutions for the environment, health, and economy.

​People in Los Angeles and Orange counties recently decided that in addition to walkability, noise was an important factor when choosing a neighborhood.

A new map called HowLoud launched publicly in May, designed to make neighborhood noise​ a little easier to quantify and compare.

This valuable website assigns a value to​ the noise level of a property on a numerical scale, taking into account ​factors such as vehicle and airplane traffic.  The Soundscores are determined by using a 3D model of a city with typography, 3D buildings and roads, and model the traffic on those roads. The sound profiles employ physics to calculate volumes of traffic sounds and how they get blocked and reflected by buildings. A one-page report is provided that includes a local contour map, and a graph displaying Soundscores for the entire neighborhood.

HowLoud has recently launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to expand into other US Metro areas as well as Canada.

If successfully expanded, the application would change the residential real estate market. Agents as well as Trulia and Zillow could begin touting Soundscore stats as easily as a community’s WalkScore.

Would HowLoud improve your toolbox when trying to sell your community? Share your comments below!

image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net