EigoPro 2級 読解 — The Age of Cities

The Age of Cities For most of human history, the great majority of people lived in the countryside, growing food and rarely travelling far from their villages. That world has now disappeared. Around the middle of this century's first decade, humanity quietly passed a historic milestone: for the first time, more people lived in cities than outside them. Today the urban share continues to grow, and experts predict that by 2050, nearly seven out of ten people on Earth will be city dwellers. Why do so many people move to cities? The answer, in most cases, is opportunity. Cities concentrate jobs, schools, hospitals, and entertainment in one place. A young person from a farming village may find choices in the city that simply do not exist at home: different careers, higher education, and the chance to meet people from many backgrounds. Economists note that large cities are also engines of invention — when millions of people live and work close together, ideas spread quickly and new businesses are born at a remarkable rate. Rapid urban growth, however, brings serious challenges. When newcomers arrive faster than housing can be built, prices rise and some families are pushed into poor and crowded neighbourhoods. Streets fill with traffic, the air becomes polluted, and public transport struggles to keep up. In some fast-growing cities, basic services such as clean water and electricity cannot reach everyone who needs them. City governments around the world are experimenting with solutions. Some are investing heavily in underground railways and bus networks; others are planting millions of trees, creating parks, and requiring new buildings to use less energy. Urban planners argue that the question is no longer whether cities will grow, but how. If they grow wisely, cities could offer billions of people a better life than ever before — and do so while using less land and energy per person than spread-out living ever could.

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