That could be dealt with by beefing up sound insulation in your party walls. Maybe building code needs to be changed to deal with this, but my guess is you just lived in buildings where the architect/contractor got cheap.

ETA: To be fair, the architect/contractor/developer going for the cheap option is pretty common. Especially when it comes to something no one can see like insulation inside walls.

I live in an apartment in downtown Seattle and I've never heard anyone through my walls. This is a solved problem in new construction.

It's also pretty well solved in old construction. There are just a lot of post-war apartments built as cheap housing with crappy thin walls— those are where you hear your neighbors through the walls.

We've been in our current flat in Edinburgh for 9 years - we've never heard a single sound from neighbours and I know there have been families with young kids and teens living directly next to us.

It's not a really old property - ~200 year old townhouse converted to flats about 120 years ago.

Walls are roughly 1m thick sandstone.

That sounds amazing. I was just in Edinburgh and the build quality of all the stuff downtown seemed extremely high. "Not really old" is different here in SF, and the quality is terrible. Half the town was built as cheap housing for migrant/temp workers a century ago and the new stuff isn't much better.

I live in one of the older apartment buildings in SF, built in 1907. (Not much exists older than that, for... reasons) I can tell whether my upstairs neighbor drops a quarter or a dime, and I am regularly woken up by the next door neighbor's iPhone alarm clock. The whole building shakes slightly whenever a Bart train (which is pretty far underground) goes by.

Walls are roughly 1cm thick plywood, apparently. And yet it still costs a fortune!

'200 years old' is ancient in the US.

I live in a 100 year old brick tenement in Brooklyn, though, and hear very little of our neighbors myself— occasional creaking floorboards, and some sounds from the staircase near the front doors, but that's about it.

I also live in an apartment in downtown Seattle and I've never heard anyone through my walls. Maybe we live in the same building. ;-)

Three makes company?

I'm in an older (~1930) building in Belltown and have only heard my neighbor above me one time (I think a chair fell over or something). Honestly, the biggest source of noise for me is outside in the summer months when I leave the windows open.

I'm in a (very old) brick building in brooklyn and I have never heard my neighbors. I assume they haven't heard me either since I play my music at all hours and pretty much whatever volume I please. Honestly, usually my roomates on the other side of the apartment don't even hear me. This is definitely more related to new cheaply built structures than sharing a wall. I do realize that there are pros and cons to suburban living as well, but noise through the wall was your only reason.

Really? In an old building in Manhattan, and not only can I hear my neighbors walking around, flushing the toilet, yawning, but I can hear people in other buildings sneezing, nevermind when they decide to have a party.

heh, yeah I mean I'm on the top floor so I don't hear anyone walking around but I do feel bad for the people under me when I drop things. Maybe brooklyn is a different beast, I have friends that live in queens that are shocked when they come to parties in brooklyn that we don't get noise complaints (we are subsequently shocked that they are shocked). Perhaps the loudness of my neighborhood drowns out the sounds of my neighbors?

That's cheap and lousy construction, not inherent to sharing a wall.

That was part it. I grew up in an apartment building with solid concrete walls (so sound proofing for certain frequencies was good) but top neighbours have flooded us a few times. Public transportation was so-so. And getting places wasn't convenient always. Shopping for food involved walking more than we wanted (especially in cold or rain). It wasn't terrible and I can see benefits to it, but it was also not that great either. I had a choice and made the choice to live in the suburbs, and it was rather hypocritical, because I could easily see myself nodding and agreeing with most of the criticisms about the suburban life.

> Public transportation was so-so. And getting places wasn't convenient always. Shopping for food involved walking more than we wanted (especially in cold or rain). It wasn't terrible and I can see benefits to it, but it was also not that great either.

Before I was 10 I lived in an urban area. It was pretty much exactly this. After that we moved to an ultra-rural area. When I was old enough I swore I would move back and I did, but within a couple years realized that there are lots of downsides exactly as you describe here. I'd add that close proximity to near constant violence is also a problem in many urban areas.

I finally left when my downstairs neighbor was violently stabbed in his own apartment.

This was in one of the low-crime areas.

Just because you can see the flaws doesn't mean you're hypocritical. There are legitimate issues involved with suburbia.

All the places I have lived built before 1940 had thick enough walls that I never ever heard my neighbors through them. The materials make all the difference.