【托福听力备考】TPO13 听力文本——Lecture 1.doc

【托福听力备考】TPO13 听力文本——Lecture 1

众所周知，托福TPO材料是备考托福听力最好的材料。相信众多备考托福的同学也一直在练习这套材料，那么在以下内容中我们就为大家带来托福TPO听力练习的文本，希望能为大家的备考带来帮助。

TPO 13 Lecture 1 City planning

Narrator:Listen to part of a lecture in a city planning class.

Professor:

In the last 50 years or so, many American cities have had difficulties in

maintaining a successful retail environment. Business owners in the city centers

or the downtown areas have experienced some financial losses, because of a

steady movement of people out of the cities and into the suburbs. In general,

downtown areas, just don’t have that many residential areas, not that many

people live there. So what have city planners decided to do about it? Well, one

way they’ve come up with some ways to attract more people, to shop downtown was

by creating pedestrian malls.

Now, what is a pedestrian mall? It’s a pretty simple concept really, it is

essentially an outdoor shopping area designed just for people on foot. And…

well, unlike many other shopping malls that are built in the suburbs nowadays,

these pedestrian malls are typically located in the downtown area of the city.

And...oh... there are features like white sidewalks, comfortable outdoor seating

and maybe even fountains, and... you know, art. There are variations on this

model of course, but the common denominator is always the idea of creating a

shopping space that will get people to shop in the city without needing their

cars. So I am sure you can see how having an area that’s off-limits to

automobile traffic would be ideal for a heavily populated city where, well, the

streets would otherwise be bustling with noisy, unpleasant traffic

congestion.

Now the concept which originated in Europe was adopted by American city

planners in the late 1950s. And since then, a number of Unites States’ cities

have created pedestrian malls. And many of them have been highly successful. So

what have city planners learned about making these malls succeed?

Well, there are two critical factors to consider when creating a pedestrian

mall--- location and design. Both of which are equally important. Now let’s

start with the location. In choosing a specific location for a pedestrian mall,

there are in fact two considerations. Proximity to potential customers,

um…that’s we’d call a customer base and accessibility to public transportation

which we will get to in just a moment.

Now, for a customer base, the most obvious example would be a large office

building since the employees could theoretically go shopping after work or

during their lunch hour, right? Another really good example is convention center

which typically has a hotel and large meeting spaces to draw visitors to the

city for major business conferences and events. But ideally, the pedestrian mall

would be used by local residents, not just people working in the city or

visiting the area. So that’s where access to public transportation comes in,

either ...um...either the designers plan to locate the mall near a central

transportation hub, like a bus terminal, a major train or subway station or they

work with city officials to create sufficient parking areas, not too far from

the mall, which makes sense because if people can’t drive into the mall area,

well, then they need to have easy access to it. OK, so that’s location, but ...

but what about design? Well, design doesn’t necessarily include things like

sculptures or decorative walkways or… or even eye-catching window displays, you

know, art. Although I would be the first to admit those things are aesthetically

appealing, however, visually pleasing sights, well, they are not a part of the

pedestrian mall design that matter than most. The key consideration is a compact

and convenient layout. One which allows pedestrians to walk from one end of the

mall to the other in just a few minutes, so they can get to the major stores,

resaurants and other central places without having to take more than one or two

turns. Now, this takes careful and creative planning.

But now what if one ingredient to this planning recipe is missing? There

could quite possibly be long-lasting effects. And I think a good example is the

pedestrian mall in the Louisville Kentucky for instance. Now when the Louisville

mall was built, oh, it had lots of visual appeal, it was attractively designed,

right in the small part of downtown and it pretty much possessed all of the

other design elements for success. But ... uh, now, here is where my point about

location comes into play. There wasn’t a convention center around to ... to help

draw in visitors, and well, the only nearby hotel eventually closed down for

that same reason. Well, you can imagine how this must have affected local and

pedestrian mall business owners. Sort of what was we call a chain reaction. It

wasn’t until a convention center and a parking garage were built about a decade

later that the mall started to be successful.

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