Crime is down in this city on the desert fringe of Los Angeles County, and Mayor R. Rex Parris is sure he knows one reason: It’s the chirping….
The chirps subconsciously discourage criminality, Mr. Parris says: “Everybody is now in a better mood, a better place.”
Those chirps aren’t from here. The mayor bought them in recordings from England, and for the past 10 months he has had his city play them over 70 speakers along a half mile of Lancaster Boulevard, blended with mellow synthesizer tones, five hours a day.
They might try classical and big band music. An Australian shopping center was concerned that it was becoming a hangout for teens, not all benign. They changed the background music, which discouraged those just hanging around, but had little effect on the shoppers.
I’ve found that opera calms my children.
Even [i]Die Walkure[/i]? 🙂
What a waste of birdsong recordings to intersperse them with “mellow synthesizer tones!” I think I’d feel as if I had stepped into a SciFi movie like Blade Runner or Soylent Green.
Hmmm, sounds like “The Village.” Be seeing you!
Sadly, the chirping may actually drive away real birds becaue the chirping they hear will cause them to think that the territory belongs to others. A more positive move would have been to make more spaces for real birds to live – like bushes and trees.