Wonderful piece! It puts me in mind of the saying: "Cities aren't loud -- cars are loud." I went to Times Square a few times during the early months of COVID, when nearly all motorized vehicular traffic to the neighborhood was suspended -- no demand for ubers, nor commercial traffic -- and the experience was acoustically fascinating. You're quite right about city design being too often conducted with an oracular bias: What we can see, rather than hear.

Allocating car use to "fun" as opposed to "the daily grind" is another incredibly useful concept, too, and one I've often thought about ...