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
What is a Port City? The port city provides a fascinating and rich understanding of the movement of people and goods around
What is a Port City? The port city provides a fascinating and rich understanding of the movement of people and goods around
admin
2010-03-26
73
问题
What is a Port City?
The port city provides a fascinating and rich understanding of the movement of people and goods around the world. We understand a port as a centre of land-sea exchange, and as a major source of livelihood and a major force for cultural mixing. But do ports all produce a range of common urban characteristics which justify classifying port cities together under a single generic label? Do they have enough in common to warrant distinguishing them from other kinds of cities?
Ports and harbours
A port must be distinguished from a harbour. They are two very different things. Most ports have poor harbour, and many fine harbours see few ships. Harbour is a physical concept, a shelter for ships; port is an economic concept, a centre of land-sea exchange which requires good access to a hinterland (内地,腹地) even more than a sea-linked foreland. It is landward access, which is productive of goods for export and which demands imports, that is critical. Poor harbours can be improved with breakwaters (防浪堤) and dredging if there is a demand for a part. Madras and Colombo are examples of harbours expensively improved by enlarging, dredging and building breakwaters.
Once a port city, and always a port city
Port cities become industrial, financial and service centres and political capitals because of their water connections and the urban concentration which arises there and later draws to it railways, highways and air mutes. Water transport means cheap access, the chief basis of all port cities. Many of the world’s biggest cities, for example, London, New York, Shanghai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Jakarta, Calcutta, Philadelphia and San Francisco began as ports, that is, with land-sea exchange as their major function—but they have since grown disproportionately in other respects so that their port functions are no longer dominant. They remain different kinds of places from non-port cities and their port functions account for that difference.
A truly international environment
Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan (世界性的). A port city is open to the world. In it races, cultures, and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places, jostle (竞争), mix and enrich each other and the life of the city: The smell of the sea and harbour, the sound of boat whistles or the moving tides are symbols a of their multiple links with a wide world, samples of which are present in microcosm (微观世界) within their own urban areas.
Reasons for the decline of ports
Sea ports have been transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught (船的吃水深度) have increased. Many formerly important ports have become economically and physically less accessible as a result. By-passed by most of their former enriching flow of exchange, they have become cultural and economic backwaters or have acquired the character of museums of the past. Examples of these are Charleston, Salem, Bristol, Plymouth, Surat, Galle, Melaka, Soochow, and a long list of earlier prominent port cities in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Relative significance of trade and service industry
Much domestic port trade has not been recorded. What evidence we have suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade. Shanghai, for example, did most of its trade with other Chinese ports and inland cities. Calcutta traded mainly with other parts of India and so on. Most of any city’s population is engaged in providing goods and services for the city itself. Trade outside the city is its basic function. But each basic worker requires food, housing, clothing and other such services. Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1:4 to 1:8.
Good ports make huge profits
No city can be simply a port but must be involved in a variety of other activities. The port function of the city draws to it raw materials and distributes them in many other forms. Ports take advantage of the need for breaking up the bulk material where water and land transport meet and where loading and unloading costs can be minimized by refining raw materials or turning them into finished goods. The major examples here are oil refining and ore refining, which are commonly located at ports. It is not easy to draw a line around what is and is not a port function. All ports handle, unload, sort, alter, process, repack and reship most of what they receive. A city may still be regarded as a port city when it becomes involved in a great range of functions not immediately involved with ships or docks.
How the port changes a city’s infrastructure
Cities which began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront. The centre of New York is in lower Manhattan between two river mouths, the City of London is on the Thames, Shanghai along the Bund. This proximity to water is also true of Boston, Philadelphia, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Yokohama, where the commercial, financial, and administrative centres are still grouped around their harbours even though each city has expanded into a metropolis. Even a casual visitor cannot mistake them as anything but port cities.
In the past, many port cities did more trade within their own country than with overseas ports.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
A
解析
从第六段第二句“What evidence we have suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade”以及此后所举的上海及加尔哥答的实例可知答案是 Y。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/h4k7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Thepurposeofthepassageistoprovidedifferentwaysforpeopletotacklethestateofextremepressureorstrain.Emotion-f
TheUnitedStatesgovernment’ssupportofslaverywasbasedonanoverpoweringpracticality.BeforeAmericaevenhadahistoryi
TwomostimpolitedriesinEuropeturnedouttobeMoscowandWarsaw.NinecitiesinAsiareceivedacourtesytest,andregrett
WhichofthefollowingstatementsisNOTtrue?Itisimpliedinthepassagethat______.
PlasticBagPollutionTheuseofplasticbagshasincreasedatanalarmingratesincetheybecamepopularinthe1980s.Bigb
A、Thepersonnelmanagershouldbefiredforinefficiency.B、Afewengineersshouldbeemployedtomodernizethefactory.C、Thee
A、Sheprefersthestadium.B、Thelightisn’tbrightenough.C、Sheagreeswiththeman.D、Thedininghallisn’tlargeenough.B[听
A、Herbackhurtduringthemeeting.B、Sheagreedthatitwasagoodmeeting.C、Hissupportwouldhavehelpedthismorning.D、The
A、Inauniversity.B、I?ahospital.C、Inafactory.D、Inashoppingcenter.A根据上下文推测,可以判断此题答案为A
______(我们一得出这个结论)thantheyagreedtoit.
随机试题
Womenwerelookeddown______intheolddays.
A、补中益气汤B、济生肾气丸C、沉香散D、前列腺汤E、知柏地黄丸前列腺增生症之气滞血瘀证,首选方剂是
下列项目中,按照规定可以免征个人所得税的是( )。
甲、乙、丙、丁四人对四个抽屉中的物品进行预测。甲:“有些抽屉中没有书本。”乙:“所有抽屉中都有书本。”丙:“第二个抽屉中没有钢笔。”丁:“第三个抽屉中有信件。”如果四人的断定中只有一项为真,那么以下哪项一定为真?()
拘传持续的时间不得超过24小时。( )
将5个字母“ooops”按此顺序入栈,则有()种不同的出栈顺序可以仍然得到“ooops”。
设A=(β-α1-2α2-3α3,α1,α2,α3),α1,α2,α3,β均是3维列向量,则方程组Ax=β有特解为________.
函数的定义域为________。
A、Acupoftea.B、Acupofmilk.C、Acupofcoffee.C
A、Bycar.B、Bytrain.C、Bytaxi.D、Bybus.B对话中,男士在邀请到女士去自己家之后说,要先去车站看看能否买到6点半的火车票。对话最后女士征求男士的意见6点左右在车站会合,男士表示同意,因此答案为B)。
最新回复
(
0
)