2. 外语
  3. (1) Many modern urban areas have been built around cars, with huge amounts of space set aside for roads and parking. But what ha

(1) Many modern urban areas have been built around cars, with huge amounts of space set aside for roads and parking. But what ha

admin2022-07-27  47
问题     (1) Many modern urban areas have been built around cars, with huge amounts of space set aside for roads and parking. But what happens when you take them out of the equation?
    (2) Picture children playing games of football on major urban thoroughfares. Tourists stood in the middle of the street nonchalantly taking photos. Restaurants spilling out onto small squares—and not a car or bus in sight.
    (3) Such are my memories of Venice, the only car-free city I have ever been to. The Italian city is, of course, unique in that it is built on a series of small islands—yet it is a refreshing experience being able to wander around without dodging in and out of traffic.
    (4) For the last 100 years, cars have come to dominate the urban landscape. Streets have been widened in many cities to accommodate automobiles, and huge amounts of space are given over to parking them. Private vehicles have revolutionized mobility, but they have also introduced many ills, from air pollution to traffic accidents. And today a small but growing number of cities are trying to design the car out of the urban landscape altogether.
    (5) Both Oslo in Norway and the Spanish capital Madrid have made headlines in recent years for their plans to ban cars from their centres—although neither have entirely got rid of them yet. "Our main objective is to give the streets back to people," says Hanna Marcussen, Oslo’s vice mayor for urban development. "It is about how we want to use our streets and what the streets should be for. For us, the street should be where you meet people, eat at outdoor restaurants, where kids play, and where art is exhibited." To do this, Oslo has closed off certain streets in the centre to cars entirely. They have also removed almost all parking spots and replaced them with cycling lanes, benches and miniature parks.
    (6) There is also an environmental aspect. Oslo is built in a geological bowl, which during winter in particular, causes the city to suffer from serious air pollution problems. Data from the local government shows a marked decline in air pollution over the past decade. There has also been a drop in trips made by car—from 35% of journeys in 2009 to 27% in 2018—with a parallel rise in people either walking or using bicycles or public transport.
    (7) A city without cars sounds like a nice idea but is it possible—or even desirable? What about emergency services? Or people who have mobility problems? "The quickest way to make a city centre die is to stop people from getting in there," says Hugh Bladen of the Association for British Drivers. Britain’s declining high streets won’t be helped by restrictions on driving, he argues, "otherwise town centres just get full of druggies and drunks". He acknowledges that "some towns and cities get clogged up but that’s just because of poor planning; they should have better parking options".
    (8) Ransford Acheampong, an urban planning researcher at the University of Manchester, says that removing cars would be helpful to reduce pollution and could improve public health "but if you take cars away from people, you need to be able to provide an alternative". Even in Europe, which has relatively good public transport, many people’s commutes and lifestyles just wouldn’t be possible without a private car. This is the concept of the last mile, which is the connection between public transport and the final part of a person’s journey. Until public transport can make this gap smaller, people will still want to drive cars.
    (9) So, what would it take to make a city earless? In the Great City Chengdu Master Plan, everything is walkable. There are no cul-de-sacs (死胡同) and there is a high number of intersections which make it very easy to get around by foot or bicycle. There is also vertical connectivity, with bridges between high rises. The Great City suburb, which was designed to house 100,000 people, is only one square kilometre across and it would never take more than 10 minutes to walk from one point to another.
    (10) Unfortunately it never got built, explains Chris Drew of SmithGill, the US architecture firm that was commissioned to design the suburb close to the outskirts of Chengdu a few years ago. Nonetheless, the blueprint shows how an urban area could be designed to function without cars. "We wanted it to be a live, work, play environment, where children could get to school without the need for a car, where people didn’t have to travel great distances to work," says Drew. With two rail connections to the rest of the city, no resident would need to drive anywhere.
    (11) There are a couple of other examples of new cities which have more or less designed cars out. In a previous role, Drew worked on the UAE’s Masdar City, which was originally designed to be entirely car free, although vehicles can now be found roaming its streets. SmithGill also helped design the Legacy Masterplan for Dubai’s 2020 World Fair. The area is intended to be entirely walkable and largely free of cars on completion.
    (12) But what about retrofitting existing cities, where most people live today? Hanna Marcussen explains the approach that Oslo took "We began with pilots to let people see what it would be like and we began making changes little by little. For example, one of the nicest squares in Oslo is outside the town hall but until recently it was full of cars. When we closed it off about a year ago, people thought it was strange—but now they think it was weird that we ever allowed cars to drive through there at all."
Venice gave the author a unique experience because ________.
选项 A、it was his first time to visit Venice
B、there was no need to watch out for cars
C、it was located on many small islands
D、he was able to wander around there
答案B
解析 从题干关键词Venice和unique experience可定位到第3段。题目问为什么威尼斯给作者一种独特的体验。文章第3段第2句提到，在威尼斯无需躲避车辆、能够自在畅行，作者认为这是一种别具一格的新体验(a refreshing experience)，这对应了题目的a unique experience，故B项“无需注意车辆”符合题意。
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