首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
(1) "The world isn’t flat," writes Edward Glaeser, "it’s paved." At any rate, most of the places where people prefer to dwell
(1) "The world isn’t flat," writes Edward Glaeser, "it’s paved." At any rate, most of the places where people prefer to dwell
admin
2021-09-18
51
问题
(1) "The world isn’t flat," writes Edward Glaeser, "it’s paved." At any rate, most of the places where people prefer to dwell are paved. More than half of humanity now lives in cities, and every month 5 million people move from the countryside to a city somewhere in the developing world.
(2) For Mr Glaeser, a Harvard economist who grew up in Manhattan, this is a happy prospect. He calls cities "our species’ greatest invention": proximity makes people more inventive, as bright minds feed off one another; more productive, as scale gives rise to finer degrees of specialisation; and kinder to the planet, as city-dwellers are more likely to go by foot, bus or train than the car-slaves of suburbia and the sticks. He builds a strong case, too, for town-dwelling, drawing on his own research as well as that of other observers of urban life. And although liberally sprinkled with statistics, Triumph of the City is no dry work. Mr Glaeser writes lucidly and spares his readers the equations of his trade.
(3) What makes some cities succeed? Successful places have in common the ability to attract people and to enable them to collaborate. Yet Mr Glaeser also says they are not like Tolstoy’s happy families: those that thrive, thrive in their own ways. Thus Tokyo is a national seat of political and financial power. Singapore embodies a peculiar mix of the free market, state-led industrialisation and paternalism. The well-educated citizenries of Boston, Milan, Minneapolis and New York have found new sources of prosperity when old ones ran out.
(4) Mr Glaeser is likely to raise hackles in three areas. The first is urban poverty in the developing world. He can see the misery of a slum in Kolkata, Lagos or Rio de Janeiro as easily as anyone else, but believes that "there’s a lot to like about urban poverty" because it beats the rural kind. Cities attract the poor with the promise of a better lot than the countryside offers. About three-quarters of Lagos’s people have access to safe drinking water, the Nigerian average is less than 30%. Rural West Bengal’s poverty rate is twice Kolkata’s.
(5) The second is the height of buildings. Mr Glaeser likes them tall—and it’s not just the Manhattanite in him speaking. He likes low-rise neighbourhoods, too, but points out that restrictions on height are also restrictions on the supply of space, which push up the prices of housing and offices. That suits those who own property already, but hurts those who might otherwise move in, and hence perhaps the city as a whole.
(6) So Mr Glaeser wonders whether central Paris might have benefited from a few skyscrapers. He certainly believes that his hometown should preserve fewer old buildings. And he thinks that cities in developing countries should build up rather than out. New downtown developments in Mumbai, he says, should rise to at least 40 storeys.
(7) The third, related, area is sprawl, which is promoted, especially in America, by flawed policies nationally and locally. Living out of town may feel green, but it isn’t. Americans live too far apart, drive too much and walk too little. The tax-deductibility of mortgage interest encourages people to buy houses rather than rent flats, buy bigger properties rather than smaller ones and therefore to spread out. Minimum plot sizes keep folk out of, say, Marin County, California. He says that spreading Houston has "done a better job of providing affordable housing than all of the progressive reformers on America’s East and West coasts."
(8) Cities need wise government above all else, and they get it too rarely. That is one reason why, from Paris in 1789 to Cairo in 2011, they are sources of political upheaval as well as economic advance. The reader may wonder if Mumbai really would be better off as a city of high-rise slums rather than low-rise ones.
Which of the following adjectives best describes the author’s treatment of Glaeser’s argumentation?
选项
A、Indifferent.
B、Neutral.
C、Affirmative.
D、Critical.
答案
C
解析
应从对全文的理解选择答案。在介绍格莱泽的著作时候,作者用了一些褒义的说法,如第2段的builds a strong case,is no dry work,writes lucidly等等,都很好的说明了作者对该著作的态度是赞赏的,故C正确。观点态度题,其他三项的意思分别为:A“漠不关心的”,B“中立的”,D“批判的”。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/x1kMFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
(1)SomepeopledescribeDarwinianevolutionas"onlyatheory".Tryexplainingthattothefriendsandrelativesofthe700,000
PASSAGEONEWhydidtheauthor’sheartpoundwhenheclutchedhisdime?
A、ItiswritteninBengali.B、ItisaccomplishedbyChitraandherstudents.C、ItisChitra’slatestnovel.D、Itsmaincharacter
Shouldhighschoolseniorstakeagapyearbeforetheygotouniversities?GapYearsoriginallystartedintheUnitedKingdomin
(1)Iknownowthatthemanwhosatwithmeontheoldwoodenstairsthathotsummernightoverthirty-fiveyearsagowasnotat
A、Sheconsiderswhetherthestorysellswell.B、Sheconsiderswhetherthestoryisbelievable.C、Sheconsiderswhetherthereare
A、Bysanitizingthewebsitestheyoftensurf.B、BysendingthemtoMissNewJersey.C、Bysupervisingthemwithproperadvice.D、
AdviceforStudents:HowtoTalktoProfessorsI.IntroductionA.Professors:normalpeople,justlikeeveryoneelseB.Student
A、Gaga’smusictalent.B、Gaga’searlylife.C、Gaga’sworkexperience.D、Gaga’sfame.B在这部分的访谈中。主持人介绍完来宾之后开始询问来宾的名字由来、成名前的工作等等。可见
ConversationalSkillsPeoplewhousuallymakeusfeelcomfortableinconversationsaregoodtalkers.Andtheyhavesomething
随机试题
在采用单向顺序阀的液压系统平衡回路中,产生停位位置不准确的原因之一是停位电信号在控制电路中传递的时间太长。()
地层窜通都是由于断层造成的。()
杜甫诗歌的风格特点是()
血站剩余成分血浆以及因科研或者特殊需要用血而进行的调配所得的收入,用于
下列资质,属于工程勘察资质的有()。
根据《中华人民共和国劳动法》的规定,下列情形中用人单位可以解除劳动合同的是()。
设全集∪=R,集合A={x|x2+x一2>0},B={x|x2—2x一3
人民警察义务的主要内容包括()。
若齐次线性方程组有非零解,求k的所有可能取值.
Forwelloveracentury,onestreetinNewYorkCityhasbeenknownfortheheartoftheAmericantheater.The【S1】__
最新回复
(
0
)