2. 外语
  3. Mass transportation revised the social and economic fabric of the American city in three fundamental ways. It catalyzed physical

Mass transportation revised the social and economic fabric of the American city in three fundamental ways. It catalyzed physical

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问题     Mass transportation revised the social and economic fabric of the American city in three fundamental ways. It catalyzed physical expansion, it sorted out people and land uses, and it accelerated the inherent instability of urban life. By opening vast areas of unoccupied land for residential expansion, the omnibuses, horse railways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to four times more distant form city centers than they were in the pre-modern era. In 1850, for example, the borders of Boston lay scarcely two miles from the old business district; by the turn of the century the radius extended ten miles. Now those who could afford it could live far removed from the old city center and still commute there for work, shopping, and entertainment. The new accessibility of land around the periphery of almost every major city sparked an explosion of real estate development and fueled what we now know as urban sprawl. Between 1890 and 1920, for example, some 250 000 new residential lots were recorded within the borders of Chicago, most of them located in outlying areas. Over the same period, another 550 000 were plotted outside the city limits but within the metropolitan area. Anxious to take advantage of the possibilities of commuting, real estate developers added 800 000 potential building sites to the Chicago region in lust thirty years-- lots that could have housed five to six million people.
    Of course, many were never occupied; there was always a huge surplus of subdivided, but vacant, land around Chicago and other cities. These excesses underscore a feature of residential expansion related to the growth of mass transportation: urban sprawl was essentially unplanned. It was carried out by thousands of small investors who paid little heed to coordinated land use or to future land users. Those who purchased and prepared land for residential purposes, particularly land near or outside city borders where transit lines and middle-class inhabitants were anticipated, did so to create demand as much as to respond to it. Chicago is a prime example of this process. Real estate subdivision there proceeded much faster than population growth.
According to the passage, what was one disadvantage of land expansion?
选项 A、It was inconvenient.
B、It developed too slowly.
C、It was unplanned.
D、It created a demand for public transportation.
答案C
解析 文中间的是土地拓展有什么坏处。我们可以首先排除的是D，因为需要公交并不是一个缺点，而是一个发展的趋势。最后一段的第三句说到“urban sprawl was essentially unplanned”城市的拓展是没有计划性的，此处城市拓展就是土地发展的意思。A很不方便是个缺点，但是文中没有提到，因此也可以被排除。B中说的发展太缓慢是文章中的陈述相违背的，因此本题只能选CIt was unplanned．
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