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在新兴经济体热烈的城市化大背景下，部分国家的城市却出现了另一个问题：城市缩水，人口减少，这被称为逆城市化过程，怎样去应对逆城市化带来的问题呢？ 点击播放原文音频 Many cities are losing inhabitants. Better to manage decline than try to stop it 许多城市的居民在流失，试图制止不如善加管理ONE of the biggest challenges for the world this century is how to accommodate the hundreds of millions of people who will flock to cities, especially in emerging economies. Coping with this human torrent will be fearsomely difficult—but at least the problem is widely acknowledged. That is not true of another pressing urban dilemma: what to do with cities that are losing people. 本世纪，世界面临的最大挑战之一就是如何容纳即将涌入城市的数亿人口，对新兴经济体尤为如此。要妥善处理这一人口洪流，虽任务艰巨，却至少已引起广泛关注。而另一个亟待解决的城市困境则不那么广为人知：怎样应对城市人口流失？ They are hardly unusual. Almost one in ten American cities is shrinking. So are more than a third of German ones—and the number is growing (see article). Although Japan’s biggest cities are thriving, large numbers of its smaller ones are collapsing.Several South Korean cities have begun to decline—a trend that will speed up unless couples can somehow be persuaded to have more babies. Next will come China, where the force of rapid urbanisation will eventually be overwhelmed by the greater power of demographic contraction. China’s total urban population is expected to peak by mid-century; older industrial boom towns are already on a downward slope. 这样的城市并不鲜见。美国近十分之一的城市在萎缩。在德国，这一比例超过三分之一，而且在继续增长（见另文）。在日本，尽管大城市仍在蓬勃发展，很多小城市却在瓦解。几个韩国城市的人口数量也开始下滑——而且这一趋势还将加速，除非说服韩国夫妻多生孩子。接下来会轮到中国：快速的城市化进程终将不敌人口紧缩的巨大压力。中国的城市总人口将在本世纪中期达到峰值，而那些老工业城市已经在走下坡路。 An abandoned street containing a rotting nursery or primary school is a sad sight. And declining cities have more than visual problems. Disused buildings deter investors and attract criminals; superfluous infrastructure is costly to maintain; ambitious workers may refuse to move to places where the potential clientele is shrinking. Where cities are economically self-sufficient, a smaller working population means a fragile base on which to balance hefty pension obligations. That is why Detroit went bust. 荒凉的街道上窝着一座破败不堪的幼儿园或小学，是一幅悲惨的景象。然而对衰落的城市来说，问题可不仅仅是视觉上的：废弃的建筑物不仅会让投资者敬而远之，还会成为罪犯的温床；过剩的基础设施需要高昂的维护费用；渴求成功的员工可能拒绝入住，因为潜在客户规模在缩减。在经济自给自足的城市，工作人口减少意味着养老基础变得薄弱，沉重的养老金负担将让城市入不敷出。底特律就是这样破产的。 So it is unsurprising that governments often try to shore up their crumbling smaller cities. Japan recently announced tax cuts for firms that are willing to move their headquarters out of thriving Tokyo. Office parks, art museums and tram lines have been built in troubled American and European cities, on the assumption that if you build it, people will come. 因此，各国政府往往试图力挽狂澜，也就不足为奇了。最近，日本宣布，若企业将总部迁出东京，则给予减税政策。美国和欧洲也在饱受人口流失困扰的城市里建起了办公楼区、艺术博物馆和有轨电车线路，寄望于“建了这些，人们自然会来”。 For the most part, they will not. Worse, the attempt to draw workers back to shrinking cities is misconceived. People move from smaller to larger cities in countries like Germany and Japan because the biggest conurbations have stronger economies, with a greater variety of better-paying jobs. The technological revolution, which was once expected to overturn the tyranny of distance, has in fact encouraged workers to cluster together and share clever ideas. Britain’s productivity is pitiful these days (see article) but it is almost one-third higher in London than elsewhere. 但他们多半不会来。况且，让工人重回人口流失的城市本身就不切实际。在德国和日本等国家，人们从小城市搬到大城市是因为后者经济更发达，工作机会更多样，报酬也更高。曾经，人们以为科技革命能够冲破距离的阻隔，事实上它却鼓励了工人们更加集中，共享智慧。如今，英国的生产力低得可怜（见另文），但伦敦比起其他地区还是要高出近三分之一。 Policies meant to counteract the dominance of big cities are not just doomed to fail but can actually be counter-productive. The most successful metropolises should be encouraged to expand by stripping away planning restrictions. If housing were more plentiful in the bigger conurbations it would be cheaper, and the residents of declining cities, who often have little housing equity, would find it easier to move to them. Rent controls and rules that give local people priority in public housing should go, too: they harm the poor by locking them into unproductive places. 意在对抗大城市优势的政策不仅注定失败，而且可能会适得其反。应当通过解除规划限制，鼓励最成功的大都市进行扩张。如果大型都市圈的住房更充足，房价就会更便宜，而住在衰落城市里的人往往没什么房产，会很乐意迁入大型都市圈。让当地人优先享用政府廉租房的租房管控制度也应该取消，因为他们将穷人限制在生产力不高的地方，这也是一种伤害。 A new kind of garden city 新式花园城市 Even so, many people will stay stuck in shrinking cities, which will grow steadily older. Better transport links to big cities will help some. But a great many cannot be revived. In such cases the best policy is to acquire empty offices and homes, knock them down and return the land to nature—something that has worked in the east German city of Dessau-Rosslau and in Pittsburgh in America. That will require money and new habits of mind. Planners are expert at making cities work better as they grow. Keeping them healthy as they shrink is just as noble. 即便如此，很多人还是会留守在缩水的城市，和城市一起慢慢老去。城市间的交通网络日益发达，多少能有所帮助，但大量城市再也无法重新焕发生机。在这种情形下，最好的政策是回收并拆除办公室和住宅，将土地归还给自然。在德国东部的城市德绍-罗斯劳（Dessau-Rosslau）和美国的匹兹堡，这样的方法已经奏效。这不仅需要资金，还需要全新的思维方式。规划者是让城市健康成长的专家，但若能让城市健康收缩，也一样值得嘉奖。 翻译这篇文章的时候，发现没有多少生词，但是却有一个非常典型的现象：使用同义词避免重复。这是英语行文中的一个普遍特点，或者说是习惯。如果你平时阅读英语文章时多留意一下，可能就会注意到，除表示强调或为了避免意义含糊之外，同一个词或短语很少在同一个句子，段落甚至篇章中连续使用。有时用同义词代替，有时用范围更宽泛的“上义词”代替，有时简单地用代词代替。习惯于中文表达方式的读者，有时甚至会因为看不出“披着不同衣服的同一个单词”，而造成对原文的理解混乱。因此，练就一双火眼金睛，你对英文的掌握就更深入了。 那么，看完了“城市缩水的正确姿势”，我们就来看看“表达‘城市缩水’的正确姿势”吧！在这篇文章中，表达“城市缩水”的词/短语出现的种类及频率如下： shrink: 5次 decline: 3次 losing people: 1次 collapse: 1次 contraction: 1次 crumble: 1次 on a downward slope: 1次 同样，作者也使用了不同的词替代“城市扩张”的意思： thriving: 2次 expand: 1次 revive: 1次 grow: 1次 你都看出来了吗？ |
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