Yes, sound gets sacrificed in many spaces. Low ceilings are cheaper to build, condition, and maintain. Nurses purposely leave patient room doors open 24/7. Hard/easy to clean surfaces are better for rough use and cheaper to build but echo like crazy. More drywall and plaster versus wood and mud walls (going back far enough).
We adapt, because humans are very good at that, but it doesn't mean we thrive under adverse conditions. More and more western lifestyles involve being indoors, so we become conditioned to lots more noise and reverberation. Our environments are getting louder: higher population densities, the ever increasing amount of multi-tasking, cubicles instead of offices, open concept home design that mean sharing laundry/kitchen noises, ever increasing number of electronic devices, more personal gizmos that sound off at every call, text, and email, and of course we end up yelling more to be heard above all of it.
The result is predictable. Combined with an aging population (in the U.S. 1 out of 25 was above age 65 100 years ago, now it's 1 out of 6 with 10,000/day turning 65) and it's easy to that we're suffering higher rates of hearing loss (or worse). Attend any audio show and the aging shows up. No wonder headphone use and convenience is an increasingly important design considerations. Of course the concern is compounding the loss by turning up the volume to try to compensate for aging and a lifetime of increased sound pressure levels.
