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  3. The city, Rousseau once suggested, is "the abyss of the human species. "And while that judgment represents a fairly 18th century

The city, Rousseau once suggested, is "the abyss of the human species. "And while that judgment represents a fairly 18th century

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问题     The city, Rousseau once suggested, is "the abyss of the human species. "And while that judgment represents a fairly 18th century view of the unpleasant industrial life, present examples don’t necessarily dispute it. Many metropolitan areas have developed into dense grids of humanity surrounded by soulless office parks and a few nice, leafy streets.
    Yet this, according to Edward Glaeser, can be a good thing. Triumph of the City, the Harvard University economics professor’s deeply researched manifesto on the importance of urban life to, among other things, business and innovation, suggests the most important investment in any city is human capital—or, more simply, population. His book convincingly argues that concentrated populations can have "magical consequences. " A steady infusion of human capital helped transform New York City from a manufacturing hub into the world’s financial capital.
    Millions of Americans embrace the suburbs because they offer affordable housing, better schools, and decent-sized backyards. However, Glaeser also believes the growth of suburbia typifies a nearsighted view of conservation. All that air-conditioning and driving comes at a cost. The environmentalists who’ve worked for laws that make it impossible to build in temperate regions have insidiously pushed the sprawl to some growing southern district -along the way facilitating a carbon emissions nightmare.
    However, Glaeser isn’t out to attack the suburban life; instead, he’s hoping to increase the number of options. He points out that many cities to a large extent are fast becoming provinces for the truly wealthy. Middle-class strivers have to take the commuter train home. Glaeser’s solution is simple: Where land is scarce, density becomes vital. Cities that cannot build out must build up. Freed from restrictive regulations, Glaeser notes Houston has built up and out to become the fourth-largest city in the U. S. Owing mainly to affordable housing and the availability of jobs, an average family in high-density Houston is much better off than a comparable one in Queens or Staten Island.
    In Glaeser’s appraisal, cities must also aim for a sweet spot that combines good public schools and non-prohibitive zoning policies. From Bangalore to Vancouver, educational institutions and the freedom to build help produce the kind of successful hubs that attract human capital. Human capital makes reinvention possible but complicated. Detroit, Glaeser argues, suffered from too much specialization: Huge integrated car companies crowded out other ideas that could have fostered valuable results long before disaster struck the Big Three.
    The author’s prescription for Detroit, is to "shrink to greatness" by searching for fresh advantages. Glaeser believes cities are about people, not places or buildings. Does it make economic sense to resurrect Detroit when the cost of building a house is greater than the reward from selling it? It could have been cheaper, he notes, to hand every household in New Orleans $200,000 after Hurricane Katrina rather than pump vast quantities of public money into rebuilding a city of diminishing economic significance.
    Glaeser may be right. As the latest U. S. Census figures prove, the city’s capital is disappearing in droves.
The word "abyss"(Line Para. 1)most probably means "______".
选项 A、very threatening situation
B、densely-populated region
C、highly-industrialized area
D、quite splendid place
答案A
解析 开篇作者指出卢梭观点：城市是人类的abyss。随后指出，卢梭的观点是对18实际不堪的工业生活(unpleasant industrial life)的评价，且当前情况也未必相对那时有巨大改变：大城市成了人口密集的格子间，且被包围于死气沉沉的停车场之中(dense grids of humanity surrounded by soullessoffice parks)。可见，abyss一词具有强烈的负面含义，[A]选项正确。
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