Americans say there’s not much appeal to big-city living. Why do so many of us live there?
都说城市不好，为什么还住在城市？
From Washingtonpost, December 18, 2018
By Christopher Ingraham
part1
[1] Roughly 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But new data from Gallup suggests many of them aren’t doing so by choice. Asked what kind of community they’d live in if they could move anywhere they wished, Americansoverall said their No. 1 choice would be in a rural area.
roughly 大约（=about)
overall 总体上地
rural areas乡村地区
part2
[2] Twenty-seven percent, specifically, said a rural area would be their ideal community, with an additional 12 percent opting for a small town. Just 12 percent said they’d prefer a big city, with an additional 21 percent preferring a big city suburb, the second-most-popular choice. Seventeen percent said a small city would be ideal, while just 10 percent said they'd like to live in a small city suburb.
specifically 具体说来
ideal 理想的
additional 另外的
opt for 选择......
part3
[3] The differences between where people actually live and where they’d like to live are telling. Just 15 percent said they live in a rural area, while 40 percent said they live in either a big or small city. “If Americans did sort themselves according to their desires,” Gallup’s Frank Newport writes, “there would be an exodus from the big cities and, to a lesser degree, from small cities and towns, accompanying a movement to rural areas.”
telling 说明问题的
exodus （大规模）出走
to a lesser degree 在更小的程度上
part4
[4] So why do they stay put? Quite simply, big metro areas tend to be where the jobs and opportunities are. “Many Americans areconstrained by financial, family and other factors that make moving to a different type of place difficult, if not impossible,” Newport writes. Labor markets work as a positive feedback loop: Job opportunities attract talented employees, and talented employees attract firms looking to hire.
stay put 待在原地；保持现状
constrain 限制
positive feedback loop 正反馈回路
part5
[5] At the extreme end of this cycle you end up with superstar firms and cities gobbling up an ever larger share of the economic pie. Just look to the recent announcement of Amazon’s new operations in Washington, D.C., and New York, two cities already awash in talent and prosperity. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, also owns The Washington Post.)
gobble up 吞噬
awash 泛滥的
part6
[6] Given that many urban dwellers apparently want to move away from the cities, Gallup’s numbers suggest that population concentration like this is more beneficial to employers than employees. Other research tends to back this up. Happiness and well-being tend to be higher in rural areas than in urban ones. Urban areas also see higher rates of mental illness and poverty. Due tochronic underinvestment in infrastructure and housing, many cities are doing a poor job of keeping pace with the flow of new arrivals,eroding the quality of life for everyone.
本段讲了城市生活的三大坏处，大家可以借鉴：
（1） 幸福感不强；
（2）精神疾病发病率更高；
（3）基础设施投资不够。
given 即使；假如
urban dweller 城市居民
back up 支持
chronic 长期的
infrastructure 基础设施
keep pace with 跟上，与......保持一致
erode 腐蚀，破坏
part7
[7] Having myself moved from the Washington area to a 100 percent rural county several years ago, I can speak to some of these factors firsthand. For anyone with even a mild misanthropic streak (which, judging by my Twitter feed, is pretty much everyone), the primary benefit of rural life is that there are far fewer people to deal with here. My home county has a population density of about 9.5 people per square mile — the density of Washington, by contrast, is more than 100 times that, at 9,856 people per square mile.
本段用比较的方法讲乡村地区的一个好处：人少，人口密度低
misanthropic 厌恶人类的
(anthrop 人类，比如 anthropology 人类学；
anthropoid 类人的；anthropocentrism 人类中心主义）
population density 人口密度
part8
[8] Many of the aggravations that we commonly associate with life in metropolitan areas — crowds, long lines, dense traffic, crime — are rare to nonexistent here simply because there are hardly any people. The air is clean. The neighborhoods are safe. The homes areaffordable.
本段讲乡村的另外几个与人口关联的好处。
aggravation 恶化的情况；坏处
metropolitan area 大城市区域
nonexistent 不存在的
affordable 负担得起的
part9
[9]There are drawbacks, however, to living in the middle of nowhere. The Pew Research Center recently reported that for typical suburban and urban residents, the closest hospital is about a 10-minute drive away. The average rural hospital, on the other hand, is about 17 minutes away from the average rural resident. This reality was driven home for my family when my third son was born six weeks early. After a white-knuckle drive to the closest hospital, 20 minutes away, we learned that they lacked the intensive-care facilities needed to treat a baby that premature. The solution was to put my wife in an ambulance and drive her across the state line to Grand Forks, N.D., to the nearest large hospital. It’s an hour from our home.
本段通过自己的经历讲乡村生活的一个缺陷
drawback 缺陷
urban resident 城市居民（=urban dweller)
drive ...home for... 让某人明白......
intensive-care facilities 重症监护设施
premature 早产（的）
part10
[10] The other headaches of rural life are more prosaic. You can forget about finding a good cup of coffee out here, to say nothing of a half-decent slice of pizza. It’s a pain to have to drive long distances for groceries and household necessities, although the ability to order things online fills up much of that gap. There are occasional issues with bears.
本段讲乡村生活的其他一些不便之处。
prosaic 生活化的，日常的
to say nothing of 更不用说......
household necessities 家用必需品
part11
[11] To be sure, rural areas in some parts of the country have beenravaged by despair, crime and drugs. Of course, the same is true for many urban areas.
ravage 破坏；蹂躏
part12
[12] Regardless, Gallup’s data underscores how many city-dwellers would gladly give up the urban lifestyle, if only they could. But therelentless trend toward economic concentration in the country’s winner-take-all cities suggest that dream will remain out of reach.
regardless 尽管如此
underscore 强调
relentless 残酷的，无情的
out of reach 遥不可及的
假期将至
祝大家元旦快乐！2019我们继续相伴~
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