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
2010-04-12
47
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 so 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 port must be distinguished from a harbor. They are two very different things. Most ports have poor harbors, and many fine harbors see few ships. Harbor 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 sealinked foreland, it is landward access, which is productive of goods for export and which demands imports, that is critical. Poor harbors can be improved with breakwaters and dredging if there is a demand for a port. Madras and Colombo are examples of harbors expensively improved by enlarging, dredging and building breakwaters.
Port cities become industrial, financial and service centers 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.
Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan. A port city is open to the world. In its races, cultures, and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places, jostle, mix and enrich each other and the lire of the city.
The smell of the sea and the harbor, 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.
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, Gallo, Melaka, Suzhou chow, and a long list of earlier prominent port cities in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Much domestic port trade has not been recorded. What evidence we have suggested 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.
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.
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 is 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 centers are still grouped around their harbors even though each city has expanded into a metropolis. Even a casual visitor cannot mistake them as anything but port cities.
______ began as ports but other facilities later dominated.
选项
答案
Istanbul and Jakarta
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/jhj7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Accordingtothetext,childrenwhogetautismmaysufferfrom______.Whatisfileeffectivetreatmentforolderchildrenwith
A、Weshouldblameexternalfactors.B、Weshouldblameothers.C、Weshouldblameinternalfactors.D、Weneedn’tblameourselves.
1.目前,许多在校大学生拥有一张甚至几张信用卡;2.大学生的信用卡的使用范围;3.你认为大学生是否有必要持有信用卡。ShouldCollegeStudentsHaveaCre
A、Thespeakerthinksthatwelivetoeat,butnoteattolive.B、Thespeakerdoesn’tthinkthatweshouldeatwhenliving.C、The
What’stheattitudemanyAmericanshaveforfleamarkets?Howcanonelearnaboutthetimeandplaceofagaragesale?
A、Agiftofmoney.B、Agiftshowingappreciation.C、Fruitsfortheentirefamily.D、Sweetsforthechildren.B[听力原文]Whatkindo
Thispassageismainlyaboutthebenefitsofdevelopingrobotsandhowpeoplearegoingtogetusedtolivingwithrobotsinthe
Thepassagemainlyanalyzesthedifferencesbetweenshynessandsocialphobiaaswellasthecausesbehindthesetwoproblems.
A、Toinform.B、Toentertain.C、Both.D、Neither.C录音中提到“TheSundaypapers,...areintendedtoentertainaswellasinform.”,可知答案是C
A、Inasupermarket.B、Atashop.C、Inagrocery.D、Atarepairshop.B女士说自己一年以前在店里买的MP3播放器。由此就可判断对话发生在商店里。
随机试题
依法成立的合同,自成立后10日内生效。
Amanshouldbe______byhisdeeds,notbyhiswords.
A.水B.盐酸C.胃蛋白酶原D.黏液上皮细胞分泌的是
下列哪项因素有利于创伤掺复和伤口愈合
国家药品标准中原料药的含量(%)如未规定上限时,系指不超过
甲公司依运输合同承运一批从某国进口中国的食品,当正本提单持有人乙公司持正本提单提货时,发现货物已由丙公司以副本提单加保函提走。依我国相关法律规定.下列哪一选项是正确的?(2009年卷一第41题)
根据《中华人民共和国物权法》,下列关于建设用地使用权的表述中,不正确的是()。
用灯泡样本的平均寿命和标准差判断一批灯泡是否接收的检验方法是()。
微分方程y’=1+x+y2+xy2的通解为________。
Itisundoubtedlytruethat____________________(哪里有贪官,哪里就有斗争).
最新回复
(
0
)