剑桥雅思15阅读Test2Passage1原文翻译

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

我们在城市中旅行的方式对可持续性有着重要影响。交通运输被估计占据了世界上大多数发达国家能源消耗的30％，因此降低对能源消耗的依赖对于减少移动性的环境影响至关重要。但随着越来越多的人移居到城市，我们也需要考虑其他种类的可持续性出行。我们的出行方式会影响到我们的身体和心理健康、社交生活、工作和文化的接触以及我们呼吸的空气。工程师们的任务是通过城市设计改变我们的出行方式，但工程行业仍然基于导致现有能源消耗型交通系统产生的假设而工作：只强调效率、速度和定量数据。我们需要进行根本性的改变，使城市出行更加健康、愉悦，并减少对环境的破坏。

舞蹈可能会提供一些答案。这并不是说每个人都应该跳舞去上班，尽管它可能会使我们更健康和快乐，而是说编舞家在舞蹈中用于实验和设计动作的技术可以为工程师提供刺激新想法的工具。著名城市学家和社会学家理查德·塞奈特改变了人们对城市制造方式的理念，他认为自从引入建筑蓝图以来，城市设计在思维和身体之间存在分离。

中世纪的建筑师通过对材料的熟悉和对现场条件的个人经验来进行建筑的创新和调整，而现在的建筑设计则是通过媒体技术来构思和储存的，这使得设计师与他们所创造的物理和社会现实脱离开来。尽管这些新技术创造的设计实践对于管理现代城市的技术复杂性至关重要，但它们在这个过程中简化了现实。

为了说明这一点，塞奈特讨论了美国亚特兰大的皮奇特里中心（Peachtree Center），这是20世纪70年代盛行的现代主义城市规划方法的典型代表。皮奇特里中心创建了一个街道和塔楼的网格，旨在成为亚特兰大新的适合步行的市中心。塞奈特认为，这个项目失败的原因是设计师对计算机辅助设计过于依赖，而未考虑到特意建造的街道咖啡馆无法在炎热的阳光下运营，而需要耗能的空调；或者他们的巨大停车场会给人们留下不受欢迎的印象，使人们不愿下车。在屏幕上看起来完全可预测和可控的事物在现实中产生了意想不到的结果。

在交通工程中也是如此，它使用模型来预测和塑造人们在城市中的移动方式。同样，这些模型是必要的，但它们建立在特定的世界观基础上，其中某些形式的效率和安全被考虑在内，而忽视了其他对城市的体验。在模型中看起来合乎逻辑的设计在实际体验中却显得违反直觉。比如，任何尝试穿过英国马路的人都会熟悉的护栏是一种基于优化交通流畅的模型的工程解决方案。在宽阔的主干道上，它们通常会引导行人到特定的过街点，并通过使用错位的进入点将过街分为两个部分，一个用于每个车道。这样做会使过街感觉更长，引入心理障碍，对那些行动不便的人产生巨大影响，并鼓励其他人冒险越过护栏进行危险的过街。这些障碍不仅使过马路变得更困难，还分隔了社区，并减少了健康交通的机会。因此，许多护栏现在正在被移除，造成了干扰、成本和浪费。

如果设计师们能够像舞者一样运用他们的身体来思考，并想象这些障碍会如何感受，或许会有更好的决方案。为了彻底改变我们使用城市的方式，工程师需要更深入地了解人们以特定方式移动的原因，以及这种移动对他们的影响。编舞可能不是解决这个问题的明显选择。然而，它与工程学共享的目标是在有限的空间内设计运动的模式。它是一种几乎完全通过身体尝试创意和获得对结果感受的艺术形式。编舞家对于不同的移动方式具有深刻的心理、美学和物理影响的理解。

在观察编舞家韦恩·麦格雷戈（Wayne McGregor）时，认知科学家大卫·科什（David Kirsh）描述了他如何“以身体思考”。科什认为，通过使用身体来模拟结果，麦格雷戈能够想象出纯粹抽象思维所无法实现的解决方案。这种身体知识在许多专业领域中都受到重视，但目前在正式的工程设计过程中没有地位。对于交通工程师来说，建议的方法是通过自己的经验即时反馈地即兴设计解决方案，或者像编舞家那样在全尺寸上模拟设计，试验不同的群体。最重要的是，他们可能会学会设计以情感效果为目标，而不仅仅是功能效果。