Don’t doom Sarasota to the ‘Sounds of Silence’

- This editorial was featured in the Jan. 4, 2013 issue of The Sarasota News Leader.In the last decade of the Cold War, a motion picture titled The Day After was released. Directed by Nicholas Meyer and starring Jason Robards, John Lithgow and Bibi Besch, it was a graphic and disturbing depiction of the aftermath of nuclear war as it affected those living near Kansas City, KS. In addition to massive casualties, radioactive fallout and the loss of every single modern convenience, their world was eerily silent.

With the recent escalation of the debate over “noise” in downtown Sarasota, we were reminded of this film. We also recalled such common sayings as “silent as the grave” and “quiet as a tomb.” It seems that complete silence often is equated with death. It is in that context we remain perplexed about those who, having sought a residence in the heart of an urban downtown, want to project on that environment a deathlike silence … what is euphemistically referred to by them as the “quiet enjoyment” of their property.

Whenever we contemplate a silent urban center, it is in the tragically unnatural circumstances of a post-nuclear disaster. Perhaps that is because, after having been in urban centers around the world, we never have encountered one that truly is “silent,” or which would afford its denizens any sort of “quiet enjoyment.” Enjoyment, yes. But silence? In an urban setting, “quiet enjoyment” seems like an oxymoron.

Downtown Sarasota is not the heart of Manhattan, but it is an urban metropolis. And that means urban noise is an inescapable accompaniment. Traffic, sirens, construction---yes, even the booming sounds of live music---are integral elements of that environment. The hustle and bustle of a city’s core create the very vitality and vivacity that attract many to live there. To desire otherwise says more about the unrealistic expectations of those who eschew noise than it does about the appropriateness of noise---both good and bad---in an urban center.

Traditionally, people prefer to live in an urban setting because of the fast-paced lifestyle, the diversity, the culture … in short, everything that makes a city the last logical place to seek out quiet. Yet, apparently, some arrived in Sarasota’s downtown hoping for exactly that. If only they, upon learning the extent of their folly, had moved to the country for their sepulchral silence, all would be fine. Instead, they have exerted an outsized influence on the city’s government, with the result that our downtown is nearly reduced to all the tumult one might find in … well, a tomb.

We have tried to see the proverbial middle ground in this controversy, some basis for a reasonable compromise. Unfortunately, expecting the center of a city to be as quiet as a rural countryside is neither reasonable nor fair. Realtors and condo salespeople might have promised a quiet downtown, but they could just as well have been hawking the Brooklyn Bridge. It was not theirs to promise. And the sooner downtown residents embrace the sounds of the city---or head east of Interstate 75---and the city backs off of its draconian restrictions on downtown nightlife, the better off Sarasota will be.