SAT阅读素材：Modern urban design.

　　SAT阅读考试除了检测考生的词汇量外，还考察考生的理解及判断的综合能力。因此，平时多看一些SAT阅读素材，注意培养语感和阅读速度，对于我们大家考取一个SAT阅读高分是很有帮助的。下面澳际小编为大家搜集整理了一篇SAT阅读素材：Modern urban design。

　　Modern urban design can be considered as part of the wider discipline of Urban planning. Indeed, Urban planning began as a movement primarily occupied with matters of urban design. Works such as Ildons Cerda&aposs General Theory of Urbanization (1867), Camillo Sitte’s City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889), and Robinson’s The Improvement of Cities and Towns (1901) and Modern Civic Art (1903), all were primarily concerned with urban design, as did the later City Beautiful movement in North America.

　　&aposUrban design&apos was first used as a distinctive term when Harvard University hosted a series of Urban Design Conferences from 1956 . These conferences provided a platform for the launching of Harvard&aposs Urban Design program in 1959-60. The writings of Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Gordon Cullen and Christopher Alexander became authoritative works for the school of Urban Design.

　　Gordon Cullen&aposs The Concise Townscape, first published in 1961, also had a great influence on many urban designers. Cullen examined the traditional artistic approach to city design of theorists such as Camillo Sitte, Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. He created the concept of &aposserial vision&apos, dining the urban landscape as a series of related spaces.

　　Jane Jacobs&apos The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, was also a catalyst for interest in ideas of urban design. She critiqued the Modernism of CIAM, and asserted that the publicly unowned spaces created by the &aposcity in the park&apos notion of Modernists was one of the main reasons for the rising crime rate. She argued instead for an &aposeyes on the street&apos approach to town planning, and the resurrection of main public space precedents, such as streets and squares, in the design of cities.

　　Kevin Lynch&aposs The Image of the City of 1961 was also seminal to the movement, particularly with regards to the concept of legibility, and the reduction of urban design theory to five basic elements - paths, districts, edges, nodes, landmarks. He also made popular the use of mental maps to understanding the city, rather than the two-dimensional physical master plans of the previous 50 years.

　　Other notable works include Rossi&aposs Architecture of the City (1966), Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Colin Rowe&aposs Collage City (1978), and Peter Calthorpe&aposs The Next American Metropolis (1993). Rossi introduced the concepts of &aposhistoricism&apos and &aposcollective memory&apos to urban design, and proposed a &aposcollage metaphor&apos to understand the collage of new and older forms within the same urban space. Calthorpe, on the other hand, developed a manifesto for sustainable urban living via medium density living, as well as a design manual for building new settlements in accordance with his concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson in "The Social Logic of Space" (1984) introduced the concept of Space Syntax to predict how movement patterns in cities would contribute to urban vitality, anti-social behaviour and economic success. The popularity of these works resulted in terms such as &aposhistoricism&apos, &apossustainability&apos, &aposlivability&apos, &aposhigh quality of urban components&apos, etc. become everyday language in the field of urban planning.

　　SAT阅读考题重点考察考生的美国大学教材的快速阅读能力、理解能力及判断能力。典型的围绕文章主要观点的问题大多是：在这篇文章中作者的主要目的是什么?这篇文章主要涉及什么问题?这篇文章主要建议是什么?这篇文章总体上想要回答什么问题等。读完每一篇SAT阅读素材，我们都要针对SAT素材想想这几个问题。