国际交流英语视听说4听力原文加翻译U1-U8.docx

Unit 1 Listening 1 A Lecture OK, everyone, what I want to do today is continue our discussion about cities and the challenges they face, and, I’d like to focus on the city of Venice, in Italy, which is an extraordinary example. So, to begin with, let’s review a few of the points we’ve discussed so far. Remember that, for centuries, the city has been struggling with the problem of flooding. As you know, the regular floodwaters—called the acqua alta—are a big problem in the city. You may also recall that the government has started the innovative MOSE project to build water barriers and stop flooding from the ocean. Now, flooding is an important issue, but many Venetians say that the city has more serious problems than the acqua alta or the MOSE project. And most of these problems have to do with tourism. Of course, tourism has both the positive and negative side—tourism is extremely profitable. But the problem in Venice is too many tourists. For example, in 2007 the number of Venetian residents was 60,000. And what do you think the number of visitors to Venice was in that year? Twenty-one million! Recently, on a single holiday weekend in May, 80,000 tourists visited the city. Public parking lots filled up and were closed. And tourists walked through the streets eating and drinking and leaving a lot of trash behind. The result is that Venice’s city services just can’t handle so many people. The city has to pay more and more money for garbage collection to clean up all of the trash. In addition, public transportation on the famous boats and gondolas is so crowded that Venetian residents can barely find room to get on. Along with trash and crowded transportation, city residents also have to deal with higher prices for food and for housing. Food prices continue to rise around the city. Some cafés charge as much as 13 U.S. dollars for a soft drink! In the Rialto Market—an area with many shops and stores—some of the grocery stores have been replaced by souvenir shops,