单选题
单选题
  • A. A town built on the concept of new urbanism.
  • B. The set of the movie The Truman Show.
  • C. The Walt Disney Company in Central Florida.
  • D. An American Studies project at New York University.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[听力原文]
W: Remember the setting for the movie The Truman Show? It looked like a nice place to live. Well, for the most part it wasn't a set, the town actually exists, and it was built on the concept of "new urbanism"—the idea of using architecture and planning to nurture civic ties and to encourage interaction between neighbors. In Central Florida, the Walt Disney Company is running its own experiment in new urbanism. "a town called Celebration." Andrew Ross is a professor of American Studies at New York University. He spent a year living in Celebration, getting to know the town and its people. Now, Professor Ross, could you say something about this7
M: The town more or less borrows very heavily from new urbanist principles—that's the town planning movement that is pledged to create environmentally friendly alternatives to sprawl and to create communities around people rather than automobiles. But, many aspects of that kind of design of town are really aimed at maximizing social interaction between residents.
W: And from your point of view these would be laudable goals. I mean you go to some horrible sprawl communities in places like Southern California and you'll see houses that only present garage doors to the street and a community setup where you absolutely have to drive to every single place and no one ever sees each other.
M: And what makes Celebration unique; there are many things that make Celebration unique, but one of them is the very high level of media scrutiny. By the time I got there to spend my year in Celebration, this was a community of folks who were already the most scrutinized people on the planet, and that generated a very high level of performance anxiety among the folks living there. Really, that trickled down all the way from the Disney boardrooms to the school restrooms, ceaselessly assessing how the community was doing, whether it was creating a vibrant sense of interaction and participation, and whether it was being a success or a failure.
W: Now despite all the planning that went into Celebration it evolved in what turned out to be unpredictable ways; a lot of people were disappointed there, some people less disappointed.
M: A lot of folks who moved in there had very high expectations, a goodly number of them were Disney-philes who had been accustomed to high levels of customer satisfaction from the company in their vacation experiences. Obviously those high expectations would be inevitably thwarted at some level. But most folks, and we are talking about a self-selecting group of pioneers who moved in there, were people who had moved from the cheerless isolation of a lot of other suburban places, were very hungry for community, very much looking for a town where they could fully participate and create and define the sense of community there.
W: What about the attempts of the planners to engineer a community where there would be a mixture of incomes? Was that effective?
M: Initially it was effective, and it is highly unusual in the American housing landscape to find fairly pricey houses just a spit away from multi-family rental apartment buildings. You just don't find that anywhere in the American housing landscape. The problem is that a lot of new urbanist towns like Celebration become commercially successful, and Celebration has indeed been that. What happens is the housing prices rise and the low-income folks can't afford to live there anymore. That's already beginning to happen; there were working class people who I knew in Celebration who had moved in there as pioneers and Lord knows how they made ends meet, but they did. Certainly it wasn't cheap to live in town, but increasingly those lower income folks won't be able to afford that.

About which of the following is Professor Ross being interviewed?
单选题
  • A. Creating environmentally friendly settings.
  • B. Planning communities around people rather than automobiles.
  • C. Designing towns to encourage interactions between residents.
  • D. Going along with practical building trends to sprawl.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[听力原文] Which of the following is NOT promised by new urbanist principles?
单选题
  • A. Performance anxiety among the town folks.
  • B. The Disney boardroom's plan of investment.
  • C. The very high level of media scrutiny.
  • D. A vibrant sense of interaction and participation.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[听力原文] What, among many other things, makes the town of Celebration unique?
单选题
  • A. It turned out to be a complete failure for many residents.
  • B. It was a big commercial success for project developers.
  • C. It evolved in ways exactly as predicted by planners.
  • D. It provided a fairly typical American housing landscape.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[听力原文] What can we probably tell about Celebration from the interview?
单选题
  • A. They are financially capable to make both ends meet living there.
  • B. They have high expectations for a quiet community of isolation.
  • C. Some are disappointed but many more are happy with the community.
  • D. Some have high incomes and others are working class folks.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[听力原文] Which of the following statements is true about those who had moved into Celebration?