Americans have a very skweed view of what apartment living is actually like, in part because the construction of such buildings in America (outside of the ultra-luxury market) is generally terrible. Lumber is abundant in North America and cheap so everything is timber-framed, which is awful for noise. I actually do not understand how people can live in two-story houses in the US. Such people complaining about noise s…
I like dumping on American housing standards, but this is completely wrong. Modern US timber framing has fairly thick walls filled with insulation. Some crappy apartments of course skimp on the insulation and you can hear the neighbors, but properly-constructed apartments are quite quiet, because of the insulation between units. In a single-family house, properly-made ones have low-grade noise insulation ("low grade" meaning it has a lower R-value than exterior insulation, because you don't need it between rooms) in the walls between rooms, so kids don't have to hear their parents screwing. "Only a plank between floors"? Please.
>That's 1 concrete framed floor, often commercial and then 5 floors of timber-framed apartments above that. Terrible.
Yeah, try actually spending some time in any decently-constructed modern apartment like this. They're not noisy at all.
Say what you want about the earthquake or fire resistance of buildings like this, but noise is not the problem you think it is.
>Actual high-rises tend to be decent because they have to be concrete and steel framed (although they may have cheap walls).
If they have cheap walls, they're going to have the noise problems you're complaining about. Cheap walls = drywall (on lightweight steel studs) with little or no insulation.
Noise is almost entirely a function of how well insulated the walls in a building are between units, except in places where the units are completely separated by solid concrete. It doesn't matter if it's wood-framed or steel-framed.