Mass transportation revised the social andeconomic fabric of the American city in threefundamental ways. It catalyzed physicalexpansion, it sorted out people and land uses, andit accelerated the inherent instability of urban life. By opening vast areas of unoccupied land forresidential expansion, the omnibuses, horserailways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to fourtimes more distant form city centers than they were in the premodern era. In 1850, forexample, the borders of Boston lay scarcely two miles from the old business district; by theturn of the century the radius extended ten miles. Now those who could afford it could live farremoved from the old city center and still commute there for work, shopping, andentertainment. The new accessibility of land around the periphery of almost every major citysparked an explosion of real estate development and fueled what we now know as urbansprawl. Between 1890 and 1920, for example, some 250,000 new residential lots were recordedwithin 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. Anxiousto take advantage of the possibilities of commuting, real estate developers added 800,000 potential building sites to the Chicago region in just thirty years – lots that could have housedfive 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 ofresidential expansion related to the growth of mass transportation: urban sprawl wasessentially unplanned. It was carried out by thousands of small investors who paid littleheed to coordinated land use or to future land users. Those who purchased and prepared landfor residential purposes, particularly land near or outside city borders where transit lines andmiddle-class inhabitants were anticipated, did so to create demand as much as to respond toit. Chicago is a prime example of this process. Real estate subdivision there proceeded muchfaster than population growth.
1. With which of the following subjects is the passage mainly concerned?
[A] Types of mass transportation.
[B] Instability of urban life.
[C] How supply and demand determine land use.
[D] The effect of mass transportation on urban expansion.
2. Why does the author mention both Boston and Chicago?
[A] To demonstrate positive and negative effects of growth.
[B] To exemplify cities with and without mass transportation.
[C] To show mass transportation changed many cities.
[D] To contrast their rate of growth.
3. According to the passage, what was one disadvantage of residential expansion?
[A] It was expensive.
[B] It happened too slowly.
[C] It was unplanned.
[D] It created a demand for public transportation.
4. The author mentions Chicago in the second paragraph as an example of a city,
[A] that is large.
[B] that is used as a model for land development.
[C] where the development of land exceeded population growth.
[D] with an excellent mass transportation system.
Vocabulary
1. revise 改變
2. fabric 結構
3. catalyze 催化，加速
4. sort out 把……分門別類，揀選
5. omnibus 公共汽車/馬車
6. trolley (美)有軌電車，(英)無軌電車
7. periphery 周圍，邊緣
8. sprawl 建筑物無計劃延伸，蔓延，四面八方散開
9. lot 小片土地
10. underscore 強調，在下面劃橫線
11. transit lines 運輸線路
12. subdivision (出售的)小塊土地，再劃分小區
寫作方法與文章大意
文章論述了“公共交通從三方面改變了城市的社會和經濟結構。”采用分類寫法。文章一開始就提出三方面：第一，促進城市實質性的擴展;第二，把人和土地分民別類加以利用;第三，加速了城市生活的不穩定性。然后就是三方面的具體內容。
答案詳解
1. D 公共交通運輸對城市擴展的影響。文章開門見山提出這一點“公共交通運輸從三個根本方面改變了美國城市的社會和經濟結構。”后面文章內容就是三方面的具體化。
A. 公共交通運輸類型。 B. 城市生活的不穩定性。 C. 供需如何決定土地利用。這三項文中作為具體問題提到，并不是文章涉及的主要題目。
2. C 說明公共交通改變了許多城市。答案箭第一段第四句“舉例說，1850年，波士頓市界離老的商業地區幾乎不到2英里，到了這世紀末，其半徑擴至10英里。現在供得起的人們可以住得很遠，遠離老的城市中心，仍然來回去那里上班、購物和娛樂”。第七句，“舉例說，在1890至1920年期間，據記載，芝加哥市界內有約250，000個新的住宅樓區大多數設在郊區。經過同樣這段時期，市區外，但仍在芝加哥大都市地區內，又計劃建造了550，000個住宅樓區。”
A. 表示成長的正反兩方面效果。B. 舉有無公共交通運輸的城市為例。 D. 對比兩者成長率;都不是本文中舉兩城市例子的目的。
3. C 沒有計劃。見第二段第三句起“城市擴展蔓延根本無計劃，好幾千個小的投資商進行擴展，毫不考慮相互協調配合利用土地，也不考慮未來土地利用。”
A. 太貴 和 B.太慢，兩個選項，文內沒有提。D. 它創造了對公共交通運輸的需求。這不是住宅擴展的一個缺點，而是三個根本改變城市的一個方面。見第一段第三句：“通過大量開發未占土地擴建住宅，公共汽車、馬車、鐵路、來回火車，有軌電車把已有人定居的居住區向外擴展了三四倍，比他們先現代時期的市中心更遠。”
4. C(第二段中以芝加哥城市例子說明)土地開發超過人口增長速度。答案詳見第二段“這些購買和置備土地建設住宅，特別是購置臨近城市或就在市界外的土地，搶在交通線路和中產階層的居民進去之前。他們這樣做的目的是創造一種需求，也是響應這種需求。芝加哥就是這種過程的典型例子。那里的房地產小塊土地比人口增長快得很多很多。”
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