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

admin2010-02-17  51
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, horse railways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to four times more distant form city centers than they were in the premodern era. In 1850, for example, the borders of Boston lay scarcely two miles from the old business district; by the turn of the 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 250,000 new residential lots were recorded within 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. Anxious to 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 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 author mentions Chicago in the second paragraph as an example of a City
选项 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
答案C
解析 细节归纳题。文中第二段指出“这些购买和置备土地建设住宅，特别是购置邻近城市或就在市界外的土地，抢在交通线路和中产阶层的居民进去之前。他们这样做的目的是创造一种需求，也是响应这种需求。芝加哥就是这种过程的典型例子。那里的房地产小块土地比人口增长快得多。”
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