【托福听力备考】TPO13 听力文本——Lecture 1

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 lo