2002年英语专八真题听力原文

2002年英语专八真题听力原文

　　听力原文

　　SECTION A TALK

　　The first area in American urban history extendedfrom the early 17th century to about 1840.Throughout those years the total urban populationremained small and so with the cities. At the firstfederal censors in 1790, city dwellers made up nearly5.1% of the total population and only two placeshad more than 25000 inhabitants. Fifty years later only 10.8% of the national population fellinto the urban category and only one city, New York, contained more than 250000 people.Largely because of the unsophisticated modes of transportation, even the more populousphrases in the early 19th century remained small enough that people could easily work from oneend of the city to the other in those days.

　　Though smaller in modern standards these working cities, as it were, performed variety offunctions in those days. One was economic. Throughout the pre-modern era, this part ofurban life remained so overwhelmingly commercial that almost every city owed itsdevelopment to trade.

　　Yet city dwellers concerned themselves not only with promoting agricultural activities in theirown areas, they also collected and processed goods from these areas and distributed them toother cities. From the beginning line and increasingly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, cityserved as centres of both commerce and simple manufacturing.

　　Apart from the economical functions, the early cities also had important non-economicfunctions to play. Since libraries, museums, schools and colleges were built and needed peopleto go there to visit or to study, cities and the large early towns with their concentrations ofpopulation tended to serve as centres of educational activities and its policy from whichinformation were spread to the countryside. In addition, the town with people of differentoccupational, ethnic, racial and religious filiation became focuses of formal and informalorganizations which were set up to foster the security and to promote the interests andinfluence of each group. In these days the pre-industrial city in America functioned as acomplex and varied organizing element in American life, not as a simple, homogeneous andsturdy union.

　　The varieties of these early cities were reinforced by the nature of their location and by theprocess of town spreading. Throughout the pre-industrial period of American history, the cityoccupied sites on the eastern portion of the then largely under-developed continent, andsettlement on the countryside generally followed the expansion of towns in that region. Thevarious interest groups in each city tended to compete with their counterparts in other citiesfor economic, social and political control first nearby and later more distant and larger areas.And always there remained the underdeveloped regions to be developed through theestablishment of new towns by individuals and groups. These individuals and groups soughteconomic opportunities or looked for a better social, political or religious atmosphere. In thissense, the cities builder had development of succession of urban frontiers. While this kind ofcircumstance made Americans one of the most prolific and self-conscious city buildingpeoples of their time, it did not resort the steadily urbanizing society in the sense that decadeby decade and ever larger proportion of the people lived in cities.

　　In 1690 an estimated 9 to 10 percent of American colonists lived in urban settlements. Acentury later, that was the end of the 18th century, though 24 places had 2 500 persons ormore, city dwellers accounted for only 5.1% of the total population. For the next thirty years,the proportion remained relatively stable and it was not until the 1830 did the urban figuremoved back up to the level of 1690.

　　In short, as the number of cities increased after 1690, they sent large number of people intocountryside and they retained. Nonetheless the continuous movement of people into and outof the cities made life in the many but relatively small places lively and stimulating.

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