The researchers pinpoint weak enforcement of regulations in marginalized neighborhoods, lack of capacity to engage in land use decisions and environmental policies that fail to adequately protect vulnerable communities as the core reasons why noise pollution is so prevalent in minority and poorer neighborhoods. But even without the specifics, the mere implication is easy to understand, as noise pollution fits in well with the other problems that plague neglected urban areas, including crime, food insecurity, eviction and other issues. The noise only adds another layer to the neglect that many poor and minority communities face; similar to how negative environmental exposures such as hazardous waste sites and high air pollution are often worst among vulnerable communities, notoriously loud places like industrial facilities, highways and airports are unevenly distributed in ways that affect vulnerable communities the most. What is less apparent is why more segregated cities are louder across the board, in nearly every ethnic community. Researchers laid the blame on the unequal distribution of power along racial, ethnic and economic lines, but there was not enough evidence to make a strong conclusion. But there is one clear piece of evidence: that segregated cities are worse off as a whole because they are segregated, and the issues they face are exasperated by the fact that there is not a focus on improving the entire urban community, just pockets of it.  

This research, while beneficial to expanding upon the vast and worrying differences that remain within urban communities, just proves that more research needs to be done into noise pollution, from how it affects the environment it permeates (for instance, noise pollution has an averse reaction on the marine ecosystem) to how it affects communities and the lives of individuals. Knowing how to eradicate it can go hand and hand with the elimination of other urban ills, and mapping out how ingrained in segregation the problem is could help push cities to reconfigure their ethnic landscapes. Since Congress stopped funding the Noise Control Act of 1972 in 1981, this could be a right-place-right-time opportunity for cities to push their data-collecting frenzy in a new direction, and another way to match up with European cities, many of which have noise pollution action plans at work. As U.S. cities have committed themselves to sustainability, eliminating noise pollution should be a part of their plans, at the very least so that the urban soundtrack sounds a little more like  Rhapsody in Blue and a little less like a hair metal band.