新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第二册 unit02b_new

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[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net，就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中！Green Spaces in Cities
[00:04.28]Where do children play?
[00:08.46]Years ago,any open field,any vacant lot,any group of trees
[00:15.84]--these were the places where children played.
[00:20.66]As families left family farms,
[00:25.31]small towns,and the countryside,and however,
[00:29.84]the places for their children to play in became rarer.
[00:35.39]Children in the cities had few options,fewer choices of places to play.
[00:43.85]In fact,all people's lives change a lot when they move to the city.
[00:50.51]In cities,homes are built on top of one another
[00:56.05]--in enormous apartment buildings.
[01:00.41]The feeling of private space and ownership
[01:05.77]no longer exists in houses literally piled one on the other.
[01:12.22]Psychologists have been studying the changes people experience
[01:18.88]when they leave rural areas and move into urban environments.
[01:25.54]One clear finding from their studies
[01:30.68]is that people need green spaces for better mental health.
[01:36.84]Children can play on paved playgrounds.That's true.
[01:42.60]However,they just don't have as much fun as children in small towns.
[01:49.26]Without grass and trees and bushes and,yes,dirt and mud to get dirty in,
[01:57.22]children miss an important part of childhood.
[02:02.47]The human soul,it seems, needs to stay close to its roots.
[02:08.84]Adults can plant lots of things like bulbs in window boxes and large containers.
[02:16.91]However,tending window boxes isn't the same as being an amateur gardener
[02:23.64]and growing peas,tomatoes and salad greens in a backyard garden.
[02:30.59]The lack of green space is now recognized and understood as a problem.
[02:37.72]City planners -- the people who design neighborhoods
[02:43.40]-- have begun to work on a solution.
[02:47.65]They want to build more parks,but land in cities is quite costly.
[02:54.49]So they look for land that no one else wants.
[02:59.42]Along rivers,under power lines,near ditches and highways
[03:05.87]-- these are the spaces that no one uses and they are everywhere.
[03:11.84]Why not use these unused spaces for green areas?
[03:18.11]Neighborhood groups have coordinated their efforts to clean up the trash or garbage.
[03:25.78]Soil from new building projects in the city
[03:30.82]has been trucked by lorries into these areas.
[03:36.58]This soil has been dumped along the sides of rivers,
[03:41.65]and strong walls have been erected to hold it there.
[03:47.02]Trees and bushes have been planted;
[03:51.48]the roots of these plants will hold the soil,too,
[03:56.84]and the green leaves make the area beautiful.
[04:01.88]"People in and near cities have little opportunity to experience parks
[04:09.37]or uNPRotected open spaces,and that's becoming a problem,"
[04:15.92]says Mister Ernest Cook,
[04:19.56]a senior vice president of the Trust for Public Land (TPL).
[04:26.83]This organization was started over twenty-one years ago.
[04:33.28]Its purpose is to protect land and public resources for people.
[04:40.44]In the past nineteen years,
[04:44.62]TPL has completed up to a thousand conservation projects
[04:51.46]in Canada and the United States.
[04:56.21]In Portland,Maine,the land along the old train tracks near the coast
[05:03.55]has become a green belt of trails between areas characterized by housing developments
[05:11.51]and those characterized by downtown businesses.
[05:17.27]To Mister Charles Jordan,
[05:21.23]the director of the Portland Parks and Recreation Department,
[05:27.17]it's just a beginning.
[05:30.62]Jordan has plans for an environmental university
[05:36.38]-- a huge urban park (5,000 acres ).
[05:41.82]It will include different environments,from canals and wetlands to forests.
[05:50.06]Jordan's plans include a network of trails
[05:55.10]and paths for people to use for excursions all over the city.
[06:01.66]He also wants to build a green belt from Portland,
[06:07.31]across Canada and the United States,
[06:11.95]all the way back to the Pacific Ocean.
[06:16.42]Communities across the continent could be connected by such a green belt.