美国国家公共电台 NPR City Planning As A Contact Sport In 'Citizen Jane: Battle For The City'

 

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

City planning is portrayed¹ as a contact sport in the new documentary "Citizen Jane: Battle For The City." The film is about activist² Jane Jacobs, who fought New York's master builder, Robert Moses, when he was at the height of his power. Critic Bob Mondello says it was never a fair fight but that didn't slow her down.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE³: She was the David to his Goliath. Designing the city of tomorrow, he saw high-rises, bridges, superhighways. And in the 1950s and '60s, he had the muscle to make them happen.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The legendary⁴ power broker⁵ Robert Moses represented the authority of the great man who was going to come into the city with his carving⁶ knife and clear away the cancerous tissue...

MONDELLO: The images on screen are of whole blocks being demolished⁷ by wrecking⁸ ball and explosives.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: ...And replace it with the shiny implements⁹ of modernist planning.

MONDELLO: Robert Moses with models and sketches¹⁰.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

ROBERT MOSES: You have to move a lot of people out of the way - a big housing project or some clearance¹¹ project. A lot of them aren't going to like it.

MONDELLO: Grant the man a gift for understatement. While he designed crisp city blocks from on-high, Jane Jacobs was looking at New York from street level. To her, a city wasn't about buildings, it was about people. Planners like Moses may have seen newsstands and folks sitting on front stoops as clutter¹².

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

MOSES: Today, our greatest single problem is tenant¹³ removal.

MONDELLO: Jacobs saw a vibrant¹⁴ streetscape.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

JANE JACOBS: I have very little faith in even the kind of person who prefers to take a large overall view of things.

MONDELLO: They were natural antagonists¹⁵, these two. And with archival footage, director Matt Tyrnauer our revisits their biggest battles - over, say, the Moses plan to declare much of Greenwich Village a slum so he could run traffic, think his neighborhood-killing Cross Bronx Expressway through the center of Washington Square.

Jacobs had just published her book, "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities," and she lived in Greenwich Village. Moses foolishly termed her just a mother with a baby carriage. He would soon learn not to underestimate mothers.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

JACOBS: You know that thing about an inert¹⁶ object? Well, there's nothing more inert in a planning office. It gets going in one direction and it is never going to change of its own accord. If anything was going to happen to reverse the way things were being done, the citizens had to frustrate¹⁷ the planners. I thereupon began to devote myself to frustrating¹⁸ planners.

MONDELLO: Oh, did she. She proved that the people of Greenwich Village could fight City Hall. But the Moses doctrine¹⁹ of bulldoze and replace was making a lot of money for developers and it was spreading.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

MOSES: Well, you have to bull it through. You've got to do it. It's like all these things of having opposition²⁰.

MONDELLO: The cities everywhere followed his lead, bulldozing run-down neighborhoods to construct soulless, low-income high-rises that no one wanted. The film shows the result - Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Cabrini-Green in Chicago - huge sterile²¹ towers surrounded by ribbons of concrete and what sketches depicted²² as parklands but what were in reality the equivalent of empty lots.

Jacobs predicted correctly that these walled-in green spaces would prove more dangerous than the busy streets they replaced because no one would ever be in them. This is not the rebuilding of cities, she wrote, this is the sacking of cities.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY")

JACOBS: Any city that's tearing down its buildings just to make money for a development or just to have novelty is doing something criminal.

MONDELLO: It would be hard to watch "Citizen Jane: Battle For The City" without making connections to battles raging today, politicians who want to build things - walls, infrastructure²³ - to clean up clutter and make people conform.

Jacobs argued that what looks to them like disorder²⁴ is actually what makes a crowded human landscape function. It's just a more complex order. And in this fascinating documentary, you can see the beauty she found in that complexity²⁵. I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF DUKE JORDAN TRIO'S "TWO LOVES")

1 portrayed   

v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画

参考例句：

• Throughout the trial, he portrayed himself as the victim. 在审讯过程中，他始终把自己说成是受害者。
• The author portrayed his father as a vicious drunkard. 作者把他父亲描绘成一个可恶的酒鬼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 activist   

n.活动分子，积极分子

参考例句：

• He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
• He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 legendary   

adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学）

参考例句：

• Legendary stories are passed down from parents to children.传奇故事是由父母传给孩子们的。
• Odysseus was a legendary Greek hero.奥狄修斯是传说中的希腊英雄。

5 broker   

n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排

参考例句：

• He baited the broker by promises of higher commissions.他答应给更高的佣金来引诱那位经纪人。
• I'm a real estate broker.我是不动产经纪人。

6 carving   

n.雕刻品，雕花

参考例句：

• All the furniture in the room had much carving.房间里所有的家具上都有许多雕刻。
• He acquired the craft of wood carving in his native town.他在老家学会了木雕手艺。

7 demolished   

v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The factory is due to be demolished next year. 这个工厂定于明年拆除。
• They have been fighting a rearguard action for two years to stop their house being demolished. 两年来，为了不让拆除他们的房子，他们一直在进行最后的努力。

8 wrecking   

破坏

参考例句：

• He teed off on his son for wrecking the car. 他严厉训斥他儿子毁坏了汽车。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Instead of wrecking the valley, the waters are put to use making electricity. 现在河水不但不在流域内肆疟，反而被人们用来生产电力。 来自辞典例句

9 implements   

n.工具( implement的名词复数 )；家具；手段；[法律]履行（契约等）v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 )；执行；贯彻；使生效

参考例句：

• Primitive man hunted wild animals with crude stone implements. 原始社会的人用粗糙的石器猎取野兽。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• They ordered quantities of farm implements. 他们订购了大量农具。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

10 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 clearance   

n.净空；许可(证)；清算；清除，清理

参考例句：

• There was a clearance of only ten centimetres between the two walls.两堵墙之间只有十厘米的空隙。
• The ship sailed as soon as it got clearance. 那艘船一办好离港手续立刻启航了。

12 clutter   

n.零乱，杂乱；vt.弄乱，把…弄得杂乱

参考例句：

• The garage is in such a clutter that we can't find anything.车库如此凌乱，我们什么也找不到。
• We'll have to clear up all this clutter.我们得把这一切凌乱的东西整理清楚。

13 tenant   

n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用

参考例句：

• The tenant was dispossessed for not paying his rent.那名房客因未付房租而被赶走。
• The tenant is responsible for all repairs to the building.租户负责对房屋的所有修理。

14 vibrant   

adj.震颤的，响亮的，充满活力的，精力充沛的，(色彩)鲜明的

参考例句：

• He always uses vibrant colours in his paintings. 他在画中总是使用鲜明的色彩。
• She gave a vibrant performance in the leading role in the school play.她在学校表演中生气盎然地扮演了主角。

15 antagonists   

对立[对抗] 者，对手，敌手( antagonist的名词复数 )； 对抗肌； 对抗药

参考例句：

• The cavalier defeated all the antagonists. 那位骑士打败了所有的敌手。
• The result was the entire reconstruction of the navies of both the antagonists. 双方的海军就从这场斗争里获得了根本的改造。

16 inert   

adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的

参考例句：

• Inert gas studies are providing valuable information about other planets,too.对惰性气体的研究，也提供了有关其它行星的有价值的资料。
• Elemental nitrogen is a very unreactive and inert material.元素氮是一个十分不活跃的惰性物质。

17 frustrate   

v.使失望；使沮丧；使厌烦

参考例句：

• But this didn't frustrate Einstein.He was content to go as far as he could.但这并没有使爱因斯坦灰心，他对能够更深入地研究而感到满意。
• They made their preparations to frustrate the conspiracy.他们作好准备挫败这个阴谋。

18 frustrating   

adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's frustrating to have to wait so long. 要等这么长时间，真令人懊恼。
• It was a demeaning and ultimately frustrating experience. 那是一次有失颜面并且令人沮丧至极的经历。 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 doctrine   

n.教义；主义；学说

参考例句：

• He was impelled to proclaim his doctrine.他不得不宣扬他的教义。
• The council met to consider changes to doctrine.宗教议会开会考虑更改教义。

20 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

21 sterile   

adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的

参考例句：

• This top fits over the bottle and keeps the teat sterile.这个盖子严实地盖在奶瓶上，保持奶嘴无菌。
• The farmers turned the sterile land into high fields.农民们把不毛之地变成了高产田。

22 depicted   

描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述

参考例句：

• Other animals were depicted on the periphery of the group. 其他动物在群像的外围加以修饰。
• They depicted the thrilling situation to us in great detail. 他们向我们详细地描述了那激动人心的场面。

23 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。

24 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

25 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。