In the United States, the State of Minnesota has an environmental law that "protects quietude." Heretofore, this law has seen little application except in rural areas or wilderness areas. Clearly, in wilderness areas, "quietude" is the absence of significant man-generated noise. Recently, a suit was brought by the Minnesota cities of Minneapolis, Eagan, and Richfield against the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) for harming the "quietude" in residential areas of these cities, areas that are near to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport (MSP). Some of the questions posed by this trial are: (1) What is quietude in an urban area, and (2) would quietude exist in the absences of aircraft noise from flight operations at MSP. This paper concentrates of the first question: What is quietude in an urban area?
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