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 the
What is a Port City? The port city provides a fascinating and rich understanding of the movement of people and goods around the
admin
2014-04-25
60
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 ?
A A port must be distinguished from a harbour. They are two very different things. Most ports have poor harbours, 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 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 and dredging if there is a demand for a port. Madras and Colombo are examples of harbours expensively improved by enlarging, dredging and building breakwaters.
B 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 routes. 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.
C Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan. A port city is open to the world. In it races, cultures, and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places, jostle, mix and enrich each other and the life of the city. The smell of the sea and the harbour, the sound of boat whistles or the moving tides are symbols of their multiple links with a wide world, samples of which are present in microcosm within their own urban areas.
D Sea ports have been transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught 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, Suzhou chow, and a long list of earlier prominent port cities in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
E 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.
F 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 minimised 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.
G 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.
Questions 31 - 34
Look at the following descriptions(Questions 31 -34)of some port cities mentioned in Reading Passage 3.
Match the pairs of cities(A - H)listed below , with the descriptions. Write the appropriate letters A - H in boxes 31 - 34 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more pairs of port cities than descriptions. so you will not use them all.
(A)Bombay and Buenos Aires
(B)Hong Kong and Salem
(C)Istanbul and Jakarta
(D)Madras and Colombo
(E)New York and Bristol
(F)Plymouth and Melaka
(G)Singapore and Yokohama
(H)Sural and London
began as ports but other facilities later dominated
选项
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/2hNO777K
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
Ifisaneveninteger,whichofthefollowingmustbetrue?
ForeachofQuestions1to9,compareQuantityAandQuantityB,usingadditionalinformationcenteredabovethetwoquantities
ForeachofQuestions1to9,compareQuantityAandQuantityB,usingadditionalinformationcenteredabovethetwoquantities
Ifx>0,whichofthefollowingisequalto1.25percentofx?
Ifjandkareevenintegersandj
Agroupcancharteraparticularaircraftatafixedtotalcost.If36peoplechartertheaircraftratherthan40people,thent
Sixpeople(twoofthemareJohnandMarry)arelinedinarow.HowmanyarrangementsarethereifJohnandMarryareatbothen
Withlegalmigration,governmentsneedtopersuadevotersthattheyareacceptingimmigrantswhowillbe______forthecountry,
BeforeGibson,populardiscoursesurroundingtheInformationAgeoftendepictedthecurrenteraasoneinwhichadvancedtec
TheAmazonrainforestremained(i)______foryearsbecauseitssoilswereunsuitableforagricultureandbecauseendemicdisease
随机试题
根据我国仲裁法的规定,仲裁委员会自收到仲裁申请书之日起应当作出受理或不受理决定的期限是
根据各级各类学校任务确定的对所培养的人的特殊要求,我们习惯上称为()
避孕片1号每片含避孕针1号每支含
A.减少肠道内氨的形成和吸收B.纠正氨基酸不平衡C.降低门静脉压力D.纠正电解质紊乱E.纠正酸碱平衡紊乱肝性脑病注射支链氨基酸的主要作用是
下列属于药物对症治疗的是
商品经营者或者服务提供者承担费用,通过一定媒介和形式直接或者间接地介绍自己所推销的商品或者所提供的服务的是受委托提供广告设计、制作、代理服务的法人、其他经济组织或者个人是
某私营业主投资建设某工程,邀请同行业有类似工程业绩的A、B、C、D、E、F等六家单位进行机电安装工程总承包的投标,工程采用总价包干,变更在分部工程价±5%范围内不做调整。工期18个月。投标前一个小时,A公司突然提交总价降低10%的补充标书。开标后,B公
我国第一艘自主建造的极地科学考察破冰船2018年9月10日在上海下水,并正式命名为“雪龙2”号,标志着我国极地考察现场保障和支撑能力取得新的突破。()
protocol
微分方程xdy+2ydx=0满足初始条件y|x=2=1的特解为()
最新回复
(
0
)