老烤鸭雅思-专注雅思备考

段落A

The way we travel around cities has a major impact on whether they are sustainable. Transportation is estimated to account for 30% of energy consumption in most of the world’s most developed nations, so lowering the need for energy-using vehicles is essential for decreasing the environmental impact of mobility. But as more and more people move to cities, it is important to think about other kinds of sustainable travel too. The ways we travel affect our physical and mental health, our social lives, our access to work and culture, and the air we breathe. Engineers are tasked with changing how we travel round cities through urban design, but the engineering industry still works on the assumptions that led to the creation of the energy-consuming transport systems we have now: the emphasis placed solely on efficiency, speed, and quantitative data. We need radical changes, to make it healthier, more enjoyable, and less environmentally damaging to travel around cities.

我们在城市中的出行方式对城市的可持续性有着重大影响。据估计，在世界上大多数最为发达的国家中，交通运输占到能源消耗的30%，所以降低对耗能车辆的需求对于减轻出行的环境影响来说至关重要。但是，随着越来越多的人移居到城市，思考其他可持续的出行方式同样重要。我们的出行方式影响着我们的身心健康，社会生活，工作方式，文化体验，以及我们所呼吸的空气。工程师面临着通过城市设计改变我们出行方式的任务，然而工程行业仍然基于之前的理念运转，而正是这些理念催生出我们如今所拥有的消耗能源的交通运输系统。其重点完全放在效率、速度以及量化数据上。我们需要彻底的改变，让城市内的出行变得更加健康，更加惬意，同时对环境的破坏更小。

段落B

Dance might hold some of the answers. That is not to suggest everyone should dance their way to work, however healthy and happy it might make us, but rather that the techniques used by choreographers to experiment with and design movement in dance could provide engineers with tools to stimulate new ideas in city-making. Richard Sennett, an influential urbanist and sociologist who has transformed ideas about the way cities are made, argues that urban design has suffered from a separation between mind and body since the introduction of the architectural blueprint.

舞蹈也许能提供部分答案。这并不是说每个人应该跳着舞去上班 – 无论这样能让我们多么健康快乐 – 而是说编舞者在实验和设计舞蹈动作中所使用的技术能够为工程师提供激发城市设计新想法的工具。Richard Sennett，一位颇具影响力的城市学者和社会学家，改变了城市建造方式的相关理念。他认为自从引入设计蓝图以来，城市设计就一直饱受思想与身体分离的痛苦。

段落C

Whereas medieval builders improvised and adapted construction through their intimate knowledge of materials and personal experience of the conditions on a site, building designs are now conceived and stored in media technologies that detach the designer from the physical and social realities they are creating. While the design practices created by these new technologies are essential for managing the technical complexity of the modern city, they have the drawback of simplifying reality in the process.

中世纪的建筑师通过他们对材料的亲密认知和对建筑地点各方面条件的私人体验来即兴创作或者修改建筑设计，而如今的建筑设计则利用多媒体技术进行构想和存储，将设计师从他们正在创作的物理与社会现实中分割开来。虽然这些新技术所带来的设计方法对于管理现代城市的技术难题而言十分必要，但它们在此过程中却存在着简化事实的缺陷。

段落D

To illustrate, Sennett discusses the Peachtree Center in Atlanta, USA, a development typical of the modernist approach to urban planning prevalent in the 1970s. Peachtree created a grid of streets and towers intended as a new pedestrian-friendly downtown for Atlanta. According to Sennett, this failed because its designers had invested too much faith in computer-aided design to tell them how it would operate. They failed to take into account that purpose-built street cafes could not operate in the hot sun without the protective awnings common in older buildings, and would need energy-consuming air conditioning instead, or that its giant car park would feel so unwelcoming that it would put people off getting out of their cars. What seems entirely predictable and controllable on screen has unexpected results when translated into reality.

为了说明这一问题，Sennett探讨了美国亚特兰大市的Peachtree Center。它是20世纪70年代流行的现代主义城市设计方法所催生出来的典型作品。Peachtree创造出由街道和高楼构成的网格，想要为亚特兰大打造一个崭新的对行人友好的市中心。根据Sennett的说法，这一方案失败的原因在于，它的设计者们过于相信计算机辅助软件所告诉他们的运行方式。他们没能考虑到，没有了老式建筑中十分常见的遮阳蓬的保护，刻意建造在街边的咖啡店无法在灼热的阳光下正常运营，必须得有消耗能源的空调系统才可以。他们也没能考虑到，巨大的停车场让人感到如此不方便，以至于人们甚至不愿意下车。屏幕上看起来似乎完全可预料、可控制的东西，一旦变为现实就会产生出人意料的结果。

段落E

The same is true in transport engineering, which uses models to predict and shape the way people move through the city. Again, these models are necessary, but they are built on specific world views in which certain forms of efficiency and safety are considered and other experiences of the city ignored. Designs that seem logical in models appear counter-intuitive in the actual experience of their users. The guard rails that will be familiar to anyone who has attempted to cross a British road, for example, were an engineering solution to pedestrian safety based on models that prioritise the smooth flow of traffic. On wide major roads, they often guide pedestrians to specific crossing points and slow down their progress across the road by using staggered access points to divide the crossing into two – one for each carriageway. In doing so they make crossings feel longer, introducing psychological barriers greatly impacting those that are the least mobile, and encouraging others to make dangerous crossings to get around the guard rails. These barriers don’t just make it harder to cross the road: they divide communities and decrease opportunities for healthy transport. As a result, many are now being removed, causing disruption, cost, and waste.

同样的问题也出现在交通工程中。它使用模型来预测并塑造人们在城市中的出行方式。重申一下，这些模型是必要的，但它们所基于的世界观会考虑特定形式的效率与安全，并忽视城市生活中的其他体验。模型中看似符合逻辑的设计会在使用者的实际体验中显得反直觉。例如，安全护栏对于任何想要横穿英国道路的人来说都很熟悉。它作为行人安全的工程解决方案，却是建立在优先车辆顺畅流动的模型之上。在主干道上，它们往往引导行人前往特定的过马路地点，并使用错开的入口将路径一分为二来减缓过马路的过程 – 一次只过一条车道。这样的设计使得过马路的过程显得更加漫长，给那些不方便移动的人带来极大的心理障碍，并鼓励其他人绕开这些安全护栏进行危险的穿越。这些障碍不仅仅使得过马路更加困难。它们还将不同人群分割开来，降低健康出行的机会。其结果是，许多护栏如今已被拆除，造成干扰、支出和浪费。

段落F

If their designers had had the tools to think with their bodies – like dancers – and imagine how these barriers would feel, there might have been a better solution. In order to bring about fundamental changes to the ways we use our cities, engineering will need to develop a richer understanding of why people move in certain ways, and how this movement affects them. Choreography may not seem an obvious choice for tackling this problem. Yet it shares with engineering the aim of designing patterns of movement within limitations of space. It is an art form developed almost entirely by trying out ideas with the body, and gaining instant feedback on how the results feel. Choreographers have deep understanding of the psychological, aesthetic, and physical implications of different ways of moving.

如果它们的设计者采用身体力行的思考方式 – 就如舞蹈者一样 – 去想象这些障碍感受如何，那么可能就会有更好的解决方案。为了给我们使用城市的方式带来彻底的改变，工程学需要更加深入地理解人们为什么以特定的方式出行，以及这种出行方式如何影响他们。舞蹈动作设计也许看起来并不像是解决这一问题的明显选择，但它跟工程学有着相同的目标：在有限的空间内设计移动模式。这种艺术形式几乎完全依靠身体来尝试各种理念，并通过对结果的感受获取即时反馈。编舞者对不同移动方式在心理、审美和物理上的含义有着深刻的理解。

段落G

Observing the choreographer Wayne McGregor, cognitive scientist David Kirsh described how he ‘thinks with the body’. Kirsh argues that by using the body to simulate outcomes, McGregor is able to imagine solutions that would not be possible using purely abstract thought. This kind of physical knowledge is valued in many areas of expertise, but currently has no place in formal engineering design processes. A suggested method for transport engineers is to improvise design solutions and get instant feedback about how they would work from their own experience of them, or model designs at full scale in the way choreographers experiment with groups of dancers. Above all, perhaps, they might learn to design for emotional as well as functional effects.

通过观察编舞家Wayne McGregor，认知科学家David Kirsh描述前者是如何“利用身体进行思考的”。Kirsh认为，通过利用身体模拟结果，Mcgregor能够想象出利用抽象思维所无法得到的解决方案。这种肢体上的知识在许多专业领域都受到高度重视，但在如今的正式工程设计中却没有一席之地。建议交通工程师使用如下方法：即兴给出设计方案，然后利用自己的亲身经历获取有关它们如何运行的即时反馈，或者像编舞人员使用一群舞蹈者进行实验一样，全方位地对设计方案进行模拟。或许最重要的是，他们可能学会如何在设计中既考虑到功能性效果，也照顾到情绪感受。

剑桥雅思15Test2Passage2阅读原文翻译 Should we try to bring extinct species back to life 复活已灭绝的物种

剑桥雅思15Test2Passage3阅读原文翻译 having a laugh 笑一笑