攀登英语网 http://www.5pds.com 提供 Unit 1
Why I Love the City
A lot of my friends are moving out of the city. They 're buying houses in the suburbs because they
want to get away from the noise, smog, traffic, and crime of the city. One friend says, \pollution in the city. I prefer the suburbs, where the air is clean.\Another friend complains about the traffic: \complains about crime: \—it's too dangerous.\
Before my friends move out of the city, they usually recite the advantages of suburban life: green
grass, flowers, swimming pools, barbecues, and so on. Yet after my friends have lived there for a year or so, they realize that suburban life is not so pleasant as they were expecting. What causes this change? Their gardens! They soon learn that one unavoidable part of suburban life is yardwork. After they work all weekend in their gardens, they 're much too tired to take a swim in their pools or even to cook some meat on their barbecues. And they have another complaint: they can't live in the suburbs without a car. Most of my friends moved to the suburbs to avoid traffic, but now they have to commute to work downtown. They sit on a busy freeway two hours every day!
My opinions about urban life are very different from my friends'—I live downtown? and I love it!
Why? Well, first, I love nature—flowers, green grass, trees, and animals. In the city, I have all the advantages of nature: I can walk through the public park, smell the flowers, and sit on the grass under the trees. I can visit the animals in the zoo. Yet I have none of the disadvantages: I don't have to do yardwork or feed the animals. Also, in the city, I can get everywhere by bus? if there's a traffic jam, I can walk home.
It seems that everyone is moving to the suburbs to avoid the crime of the big cities. I have a theory
about urban crime, however, so I feel safe downtown. The criminal life will reflect changes in society: if people are buying homes in the suburbs, the criminals will soon follow. Criminals want to avoid noise, smog, and pollution, too. Soon, overcrowding and crime will be problems of the suburbs instead of the city!
People on the Move
The history of the American people is, in part, the history of the movement of the American people.
They moved from the colonies of the East Coast to the open spaces of the West. They moved from the country and the farm to the city. More recently, Americans have been moving from the cities to the suburbs.
Open Space; The Move West
Pioneer Americans began moving from the East Coast to the West 250 years ago. They moved west
for many reasons. One reason was the availability of unlimited open space and land for farming. Americans liked large open spaces, and they also liked the freedom and independence to develop the land in their own way. Some of the land became farms. Important minerals were discovered in some areas, so some of the land became
攀登英语网 http://www.5pds.com 提供 mines. Other large areas became cattle ranches. There seemed to be enough land for everybody. But it was a difficult life—a life of endless work and hardship.
The Cities
After 1860, the Industrial Revolution changed the United States. Americans learned how to
manufacture steel. They began to produce petroleum. The automobile was invented. Factories of all kinds began to appear, and cities began to grow up around the factories. Farmers and other country people moved to the growing cities in order to find jobs and an easier life. In the early 1900s, the cities were busy, exciting places. However, there was also a lot of poverty and hardship.
The cities grew up—the buildings got taller—and the cities grew out—they spread out from the center.
Private houses with yards and porches disappeared. Apartment buildings, each one taller than the next, took their place. More and more people moved to the cities, and the cities got bigger and bigger.
Some cities could not spread out because there was no room to do so. These cities, of which New
York is the best example, became more and more crowded. More people meant more cars, trucks, and buses, more noise, more pollution, and more crime. Many cities became ugly and dirty. Some people and some businesses began to leave the cities and move to the suburbs outside the cities.
The Suburbs
The move to the suburbs is still happening. Americans are looking for a small piece of land that they
can call their own. They want a house with a yard. However, they do not want to give up the good jobs they have in the city. In many cases, companies in the suburbs give them jobs. In other cases, Americans tend to commute to and from the cities where their jobs are. In recent years, more and more businesses are moving to the suburbs. They are attracting many people and the suburbs are becoming crowded.
What Next?
Americans have watched their big cities fall slowly into disrepair and die. Many middle-class people
have left the cities, and only the very rich and the very poor are staying behind.
Concerned Americans are trying to solve the problems of noise, dirt, crime, and pollution in the big
cities. They are trying to rebuild bad sections of the cities in order to attract and keep business people. They are trying to make their cities beautiful. Now many Americans are thinking of moving back to the cities.
Other Americans are finding that even the suburbs have become too crowded. They are looking for
unpolluted open spaces and for an independent way of life. They are ready to move from the suburbs to the country.
Perhaps Americans will always be on the move.
Caution: Bumpy Road Ahead
Students graduating from colleges today are not fully prepared to deal with the \
belief that college students need to be taught more skills and information to enable them to meet the challenges that face everyone in daily life. The areas in which students need training are playing the credit game, planning their personal financial strategy, and consumer awareness.
攀登英语网 http://www.5pds.com 提供 Learning how to obtain and use credit is probably the most valuable knowledge a young person can
have. Credit is a dangerous tool that can be of tremendous help if it is handled with caution. Having credit can enable people to obtain material necessities before they have the money to purchase them outright. But unfortunately, many, many young people get carried away with their handy plastic credit cards and awake one day to find they are in serious financial debt. Learning how to use credit properly can be a very difficult and painful lesson indeed.
Of equal importance is learning how to plan a personal budget. People have to know how to control
money; otherwise, it can control them. Students should leave college knowing how to allocate their money for living expenses, insurance, savings, and so forth in order to avoid the \again for two weeks!\
Along with learning about credit and personal financial planning, graduating college students should
be trained as consumers. The consumer market today is flooded with a variety of products and services of varying quality and prices. A young person entering the \about which product to buy or whose services to engage. He is usually unaware of such things as return policies, guarantees, or repair procedures. Information of this sort is vital knowledge to everyday living.
For a newly graduated college student, the \is
faced with such issues as handling credit, planning a budget, or knowing what to look for when making a purchase and whom to purchase it from. Entering this \educated in dealing with these areas of daily life. What better place to accomplish this than in college?
Memory Lane Isn't What It Used to Be
About this time every year, I get very nostalgic. Walking through my neighborhood on a fall afternoon
reminds me of a time not too long ago when sounds of children filled the air, children playing games on a hill, and throwing leaves around in the street below, I was one of those children, carefree and happy. I live on a street that is only one block long. I have lived on the same street for sixteen years. I love my street. One side has six houses on it, and the other has only two houses, with a small hill in the middle and a huge cottonwood tree on one end. When I think of home, I think of my street, only I see it as it was before. Unfortunately, things change. One day, not long ago, I looked around and saw how different everything has become. Life on my street will never be the same because neighbors are quickly growing old, friends are growing up and leaving, and the city is planning to destroy my precious hill and sell the property to contractors.
It is hard for me to accept that many of my wonderful neighbors are growing old and won't be around
much longer. I have fond memories of the couple across the street, who sat together on their porch swing almost every evening, the widow next door who yelled at my brother and me for being too loud, and the crazy old man in a black suit who drove an old car. In contrast to those people, the people I see today are very old neighbors who have seen better days. The man in the black suit says he wants to die, and another neighbor just sold his house and moved into a nursing home. The lady who used to yell at us is too tired to bother anymore, and the couple across the street rarely go out to their front porch these days. It is difficult to watch these precious people as they near the end of their lives because at one time I thought they would live forever.
The \
and peers move on. Once upon a time, my life and the lives of my peers revolved around home. The boundary of