2013年6月英语六级考试阅读练习题（13）

　A few years ago, Ann and Walter Taylor thought it might be time to move out of their New York City apartment to the suburbs. They had one young son and another child on the way. But after months of looking, they became discouraged and decided to buy an old townhouse right in the middle of Brooklyn, which is a part of New York City. To their delight, they discovered that they weren’t the only young couple to have made such a decision. In fact, the entire area in Brooklyn had been settled by young families. And as a result, the neighborhood, which had been declining for years, was now being restored.

Brooklyn isn’t the only city in the United States to experience this kind of renewal. So are Philadelphia and St. Louis. And Charleston, South Carolina, has so successfully rebuilt its old central area that it now ranks as one of America’s most charming cities. The restoration of the old port city of Savannah, Georgia, is also living proof that downtown areas do not need to die. But encouraging as these developments may be, they are among the few bright spots in a mass of difficulties that today’s cities face. Indeed, their woes are so many that it is fair to ask whether or not the inner city, the core of most urban areas will manage to survive at all.

In the 1940a, urban Americans began a mass move to the suburbs in search of fresh air, elbowroom, and privacy. Suburbs began to sprawl out across the countryside. Since most of those making the move were middle-class, they took with them the tax money the cities needed to maintain the neighborhoods in which they had lived. The people left in the cities were often those who were too old or too poor to move. Thus, many cities began to fall into disrepair. Crime began to soar, and public transportation was neglected. (In the past sixty years San Francisco is the only city in the United States to have completed a new mass transit system.) Meanwhile, housing construction costs continued to rise higher and higher. Middle-class housing was allowed to decay, and little new housing was constructed.

Eventually, many downtown areas existed for business only. During the day they would be filled with people working in offices, and at night they would be deserted. Given these circumstances, some business executives began asking, "Why bother with going downtown at all? Why not move the offices to the suburbs so that we can live and work in the same area?" Gradually, some of the larger companies began moving out of the cites, with the result that urban centers declined even further and the suburbs expanded still more. This movement of businesses to the suburbs is not confined to the United States. Businesses have also been moving to the suburbs in Stockholm, Sweden, in Bonn, Germany, and in Brussels, Belgium, as well.

But it may well be that this movement to the suburbs has reached its peak. Some people may be tired of spending long hours commuting, and they may have begun to miss the advantages of culture and companionship provided by city life. Perhaps the decision made by the Taylors is a sign that people will return to the cities and begin to restore them. h begins to look as if suburban sprawl may not have been the answer to man’s need to create an ideal environment in which to live and work.