Lesson46
After millennia of growth so slow that each generation hardly noticed it, the cities are suddenly racing off in every direction. The world population goes up by two per cent a year, city population goes up by four per cent a year, but in big cities the rate may be as much as five and six per cent a year. To give only one example of almost visible acceleration, Athens today grows by three dwellings And 100 square metres of road every hour. There is no reason to believe that this pace will slacken. As technology gradually swallows up all forms of work, industrial and agricultural, the rural areas are going to shrink, just as they have shrunk in Britain, and the vast majority of their people will move into the city. In fact, in Britain now only about four or five per cent of people live in rural areas and depend upon them; all through the developing world the vanguard of the rural exodus has reached the urban fringes already, and there they huddle, migrants in the favellas and barrios of Latin America, in shanty towns in Africa, in those horrifying encampments one sees on the outskirts of Calcutta and Bombay. We are heading towards an urban world.
This enormous increase will go ahead whatever we do, and we have to remember that the new cities devour space. People now acquire far more goods and things. There is a greater density of household goods; they demand more services such as sewage and drainage. Above all the car changes everything: rising incomes and rising populations can make urban car density increase by something like four and five per cent in a decade; traffic flows rise to fill whatever scale of highways are provided for them. The car also has a curious ambivalence: it creates and then it destroys mobility. The car tempts people further out and then gives them the appalling problem of getting back. It makes them believe they can spend Sunday in Brighton, but makes it impossible for them to return before, say, two in the morning. People go further and further away to reach open air and countryside which continuously recedes from them, and just as their working weeks decline and they begin to have more time for leisure, they find they cannot get to the open spaces or the recreation or the beaches which they now have the time to enjoy.
Recently some studies were made in the behaviour of mice when exposed to more than a certain degree of density, frustration, and noise, and the mice just became deranged. I think some sociologists wonder whether it might not be the same for men. This combination of very high density of population, goods and services, and machines, all increasing with almost bruta1 speed, does account for some really antisocial tendencies in modern urban growth.
BARBARA WARD The Menace of Urban Explosion from The Listenter
参考译文
经历过每一代人几乎觉察不到的千百年缓慢增长之后，城市突然全方位迅猛发展。世界人口每年增加百分之二，城市人口增长率为百分之四，而大城市则高达百分之五或六。举一个几乎看
得见的加速发展例子：今天的雅典在每个钟头里增加3所住宅和100平方米道路。没有理由认为这个速度会下降。由于技术逐渐淹没各行各业，不论是工业还是农业，农村地区正在缩小，正如
英国已发生过的那样，于是其大部分人口就将流入城市。事实上，英国目前只有百分之四或百分之五的人口住在农村地区并以土地为生；在整个发展中世界，从农村出走人群中的先头部队已经
到达城市边缘，在那儿挤成一团，他们可见于拉美的贫民窟和村镇、非洲的棚户区以及加尔各答和孟买郊区触目惊心的营地里。我们正朝城市世界前进。
不管我们怎么办，这种巨大的增长都将持续下去，我们还得记住新城市会吞没空间。人们现在取得的商品和用具要多得多。家用物品更加密集；他们需要诸如污水处理和下水道之类的更多设施。
首先是汽车改变了一切：增长的收入和增长的人口能在10年内使城市汽车密度增长达到百分之四或百分之五；车流的增长会使任何规模的公路网车满为患。汽车还具有难以理解的自相矛盾：它创造
出机动性，然后又自身予以破坏。汽车诱使人们更加远行，然后又使车主面临归来难的问题。它使人们相信可在布赖顿渡过周末，却又使他们不可能在凌晨二时之前归来。人们越走越远以到达不断离
他们远去的空气清新的乡村，就在他们的工作周缩短，开始更多的空闲之际，他们发现自己已无法到达那些现在才有时间去欣赏的开阔空间、娱乐场或是海滩。
最近有人对处于超过一定程度的密度、挫折和噪声中的老鼠进行研究，发现老鼠会发狂。我想社会学家大概会认为人也会这样。极高密度的人口、商品和设施以及机器交织在一起，而且以疯狂的
速度在增长，确实是现代城市发展中一些真正反社会趋势的起因。
—————————————————————————
更多精彩内容请访问：
1、育心经典网站：http://www.yshin.com
2、育心经典论坛：http://www.yshin.com/bbs
3、育心商城：http://www.yshin.com/shop
4、育心淘宝商铺：http://shop33227197.taobao.com/
5、育心园-儿童读经教育交流网：http://bbs.bbedu.com
|
网银支付，在线充值，方便快捷！
网友评论：（只显示最新10条。评论内容只代表网友观点，与本站立场无关！）