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, railways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to four times more distant from 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 20th 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 250000 new residential lots were recorded within the borders of Chicago, most of them located in outlying areas. Over the same period, another 550000 were plotted outside the city limits but within the metropolitan area. Anxious to take advantage of the possibilities of commuting, real estate developers added 800000 potential building sites to the Chicago region in just 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.
The best title for the passage should be________.
选项 A、Instability of Urban Life
B、Types of Mass Transportation
C、Land Use
D、The Effect of Mass Transportation on Urban Expansion
答案D
解析 本题考查文章主旨，需从全文角度作答。主旨大意题。文章一开始就提出公交系统对美国城市的社会和经济结构产生巨大影响。接着作者以波士顿和芝加哥为例来说明公交系统对城区扩展的影响。可见，D阐述了这一主题，故为正确答案。
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