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As the world becomes increasingly urban, with denser cities, residents become subject to greater amounts of noise. Since the late 19th century, people have formed groups to oppose urban noise generated by industrialization, motor vehicles and jet-planes. This article gives the first detailed account of online noise-abatement groups through a case study of Quiet Australia. It maps the key aims of this group, which are to mobilize community support, raise awareness of noise-related problems, gather and exchange expert information, and promote political participation to reduce noise. I argue that there exists a moral geography of noise in which excessive noise-making is seen by Quiet Australia members as morally inappropriate and uncivilized behaviour, which leads to social disintegration. I theorize that such noise-abatement groups seek what I have termed a ‘residential ethics’ or consideration of others through either state-led or neoliberal self-governance to restore social order and uphold social ‘decency’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relative roles of social ties and collective efficacy in explaining community variations in violent victimization in Australia. Using data from a survey of 2,859 residents across 82 communities in the city of Brisbane, coupled with official reported crime data provided by the Queensland Police Service and Australian Bureau of Statistics census data for 2001, the authors employ multilevel statistical models to depict the relative importance of social ties and collective efficacy in predicting between-neighborhood violent victimization in an Australian context. The models include measures of social relationships and community-based crime prevention programs, and the authors compare and contrast their findings with studies of collective efficacy in Chicago and Stockholm, finding similar results. These findings suggest that despite structural and cultural differences between the United States and Australia in particular, collective efficacy is a significant mechanism in explaining the spatial distribution of self-reported violent victimization in the Australian context. This research underscores the importance of cross-cultural theory testing and the need to further develop the measurement of ecological constructs such as social ties and organizational behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]