How loud are cities?

Hi, this is David, co-CEO of Datawrapper. Today, I want to talk about something that surrounds all of us, but some much more than others: noise.

I recently returned from my first trip to India — a visit that took me to Mumbai, Goa, Tiruchirappalli, and a few places in between. Settling back into Berlin life, I was surprised for the city to suddenly feel… quiet.

It turns out that spending time in Indian megacities resets your internal noise baseline pretty quickly. And once mine had shifted, Berlin sounded almost muted. That made me wonder: what are the loudest cities in the world?

There’s no definitive global ranking, but the UN Environment Programme’s Frontiers Report compiled measurements of daytime traffic noise in dozens of cities. It doesn’t capture all forms of urban sound, but it does give an interesting cross-section of how noisy different places can be:

What stands out immediately is how South Asian cities cluster at the very top. Dhaka, Bangladesh, recorded the highest levels in the dataset — a remarkable 119 dB. Cities in India, Pakistan, and Nepal also appear frequently among the loudest.

One city that also fulfills its stereotype is New York: with a measured maximum of 95 dB, it's no wonder it became known as the city that doesn't sleep. Mumbai wasn’t included in this particular study, but based on how its streets felt, I'm very confident it would hold its own.

That’s it for this week’s Weekly Chart! Next week you’ll hear from my colleague Toni, a developer on Datawrapper’s App team.