万花筒 Kaleidoscope 2007-07-06&07-08, 纽约---一个怎么样的城市

Who said New York will be a great city if it's ever finished, it'll never be finished. But it's already a great city to cover. It's a city of superlatives. It's a city that's ascendant. It's a city of new subways, new stadiums, new immigrants and a brand-new City Room for the New York Times.

City Room is a collaborative effort by reporters and editors of the New York Times. It's intended to enhance and build on, and supplement the news articles in our traditional print edition while at the same time giving readers a much greater chance to interact with each other with newsmakers and with journalists.

I was born in Manhattan and I spent the first few years of my life on the Lower East Side on Rutgers Street. Like many neighborhoods, the Lower East Side is in the midst of major social and economic change. Pressures over affordable¹ housing and gentrification threaten to alter the neighborhood's historic character. Only a few blocks from housing developments filled with working immigrants are hit bars and luxury apartments that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

New York is changing and the New York Times is changing, too. As more readers get their news and information from the web, our tools for reporting and presenting the news have changed as well. This June, the Metro² Staff moved to the Times's new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. We have a new City Room literally³, and a new City Room virtually. The new City Room blog is not only a way to bring a constant stream of news to our readers but also to invite them into the conversation. We hope this blog will be a space for New Yorkers and others to exchange ideas, share their own experiences and debate the issues of the day. This blog will have regular features, roundups of the day's leading stories, news items from the five boroughs⁴, political dispatches from Albany, Q&A sessions with newsmakers and experts, and web-videos like the one you are watching now. The old City Room was a space for reporters and editors. The new City Room is big enough to fit anybody who wants to stop by. Come in and join the conversation.

-----------------------------------------------
Gentrification: Gentrification, or urban gentrification, is a phenomenon in which low-cost, physically⁵ deteriorated⁶ neighborhoods undergo physical renovation⁷ and an increase in property values, along with an influx⁸ of wealthier residents who may displace the prior residents.

The five boroughs: It refers to Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island which make up the New York City.

1 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

2 metro   

n.地铁；adj.大都市的；(METRO)麦德隆(财富500强公司之一总部所在地德国，主要经营零售)

参考例句：

• Can you reach the park by metro?你可以乘地铁到达那个公园吗？
• The metro flood gate system is a disaster prevention equipment.地铁防淹门系统是一种防灾设备。

3 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

4 boroughs   

（尤指大伦敦的）行政区( borough的名词复数 )； 议会中有代表的市镇

参考例句：

• London is made up of 32 boroughs. 伦敦由三十二个行政区组成。
• Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City. 布鲁克林区是纽约市的五个行政区之一。

5 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

6 deteriorated   

恶化，变坏( deteriorate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Her health deteriorated rapidly, and she died shortly afterwards. 她的健康状况急剧恶化，不久便去世了。
• His condition steadily deteriorated. 他的病情恶化，日甚一日。

7 renovation   

n.革新，整修

参考例句：

• The cinema will reopen next week after the renovation.电影院修缮后，将于下星期开业。
• The building has undergone major renovation.这座大楼已进行大整修。

8 influx   

n.流入，注入

参考例句：

• The country simply cannot absorb this influx of refugees.这个国家实在不能接纳这么多涌入的难民。
• Textile workers favoured protection because they feared an influx of cheap cloth.纺织工人拥护贸易保护措施，因为他们担心涌入廉价纺织品。