7. CITIES AND TRANSPORT 1. PRESENTATION SKILLS Chazal et al.,Oxford EAP, OUP, 2013, chapter 4 What basic questions do you commonly discuss in presentations so as to from a structure and include important information? You are going to watch students’ presentations on two new eco-cities. How would you define an eco-city? Write your definition. 2. Watch the introduction and complete the definition and questions. definition questions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 3. Watch the extract about Tianjin eco-city. Complete part A – main points and part B – signaling phrases in the table. Question A Tianjin: main points B Signaling phrases 1 A modern, environmentally friendly city So, what is Tianjin eco-city? 2 3 4 5 Evaluation 4. Watch the extract about Masdar. Complete these sentences with the descriptive phrases the speaker uses. 1. Basically, Masdar is a ………………….. 2. It’s been described as………………… 3. They’re based around clean technology like ………………. 4. So, as I said, Masdar is this new development for ……………. 5. It uses solar energy, and ………………. 5. Rewrite expressions 1-6 as more concise noun phrases. Example: an achievement which is significant in political terms a politically significant achievement 1. a country whose importance is increasing 2. a company that is expanding rapidly 3. an organization which is international but little known 4. a building that is modern, and that is environmentally friendly 5. a solution that is practical and has a low impact on the environment 6. a city which is developing rapidly and whose influence is increasing 6. Evaluating presentations Do you agree with the speakers that eco-cities are always a good thing? Give reasons. What possible problems might be associated with eco-cities? DEFINITIONS Definiendum = genus + differentia 1. Why do we define words? A definition is partly fact and partly reasoned opinion. Which quote illustrates the fact / opinion? “This is what this word means when military historians, or beekeepers, use it.” "Let's agree, for now, to use this word in this way so we can understand each other and come to agreement on other things." http://www.wou.edu/~corninr/wr135/definition.html 2. In ex. 2 you wrote a definition of an eco-city. What parts does your definition have? 1. 2. 3. What grammar structure did you use? What are the rules? 3. Mistakes in defining: 1. Giving an example rather than a definition. An example may, of course follow a definition but it should not take its place. 2. Omitting the general class word, or the particular characteristics. The definition is then incomplete. 3. Using the defined word in the definition itself. If the reader does not understand the word, he/she will not understand the repeated use of it. What’s wrong with the following definitions? Improve them. a) A spoon is something to eat with. b) A unicorn is not a real animal. c) A unicorn is a beast with one horn. d) Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own. f) A car is a Peugeot, a Mercedes or a Škoda. g) Customer ID is defined as "The identifier of the Customer" READING: Cities and sustainable transport From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 1. Pre-reading Discuss the following questions with a partner. Then compare your ideas with the passage below. 1. What can “social sustainability” mean? 2. What is a “sedentary lifestyle”, what are the dangers and which people may be affected? 3. What happens when institutions, shops, and schools move out of city centers? Cities with overbuilt roadways have experienced unintended consequences, linked to radical drops in public transport, walking, and cycling. In many cases, streets became void of “life.” Stores, schools, government centers and libraries moved away from central cities, and residents who did not flee to the suburbs experienced a much reduced quality of public space and of public services. As schools were closed their mega-school replacements in outlying areas generated additional traffic; the number of cars on US roads between 7:15 and 8:15 a.m. increases 30% during the school year. Yet another impact was an increase in sedentary lifestyles, causing and complicating a national epidemic of obesity, and accompanying dramatically increased health care costs. 2. Read the text and discuss your answers. 1) How are the shapes of cities influenced by their transport systems? 2) What did a model of an imagined city looked like? 3) What were the main arguments against the prevalence of cars in city transport? 4) How did transport planning in Europe differed from that in the U.S.A.? 5) Where is Curitiba? Cities are shaped by their transport systems. In The City in History, Lewis Mumford documented how the location and layout of cities was shaped around a walkable centre, often located near a port or waterway, and with suburbs accessible by animal transport or, later, by rail or tram lines. In 1939, the New York World's Fair included a model of an imagined city, built around a car-based transport system. In this "greater and better world of tomorrow", residential, commercial and industrial areas were separated, and skyscrapers loomed over a network of urban motorways. These ideas captured the popular imagination, and are credited with influencing city planning from the 1940s to the 1970s. The popularity of the car in the post-war era led to major changes in the structure and function of cities. There was some opposition to these changes at the time. Lewis Mumford asked "is the city for cars or for people?" Donald Appleyard documented the consequences for communities of increasing car traffic in "The View from the Road" (1964) and in the UK, Mayer Hillman first published research into the impacts of traffic on child independent mobility in 1971. Despite these notes of caution, trends in car ownership, car use and fuel consumption continued steeply upward throughout the post-war period. Mainstream transport planning in Europe has, by contrast, never been based on assumptions that the private car was the best or only solution for urban mobility. For example the Dutch Transport Structure Scheme has since the 1970s required that demand for additional vehicle capacity only be met "if the contribution to societal welfare is positive", and since 1990 has included an explicit target to halve the rate of growth in vehicle traffic. Some cities outside Europe have also consistently linked transport to sustainability and to land use planning, notably Curitiba, Brazil, Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Canada. 3. Replace these words with synonyms or words with similar meaning. a) walkable centre ………………………… b) layout of cities……………… c) skyscrapers looming over st …………… d) the ideas captured the imagination… e) child independent mobility……………… f) an explicit target ………………… Reading activities prepared by E. Čoupková LISTENING Jaime Lerner: A song of the city https://www.ted.com/talks/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city/transcript?language=en#t-740464 Jaime Lerner (born 1937) is a Brazilian politician. He is renowned as an architect and urban planner. As mayor of Curitiba, he for example transformed a gridlocked commercial artery into a spacious pedestrian mall over a long weekend. 1. The speaker believes that A cities cannot solve problems with climate change B cities cannot be improved in relatively short time C lack of money slows down improvements D there is no solution without co-responsibility 2. Which character from his book never wants to leave his position A Accordion, the bus B the turtle C Otto, the automobile D a Brazilian 3. The boarding tubes in Curitiba A allow for more frequent connections B make buses better than subway C mainly help handicapped people D mainly improve the design and image of the city 4. Old empty quarries were transferred to A open-air opera houses B museums C educational centres D parks 5.J. Lerner says that creativity starts when A you teach children B you cut a zero from your budget C you use alternative materials D you want to transform things