1    You have a science exam tomorrow. Good thing your lab partner lives upstairs — on the 400th floor. Did you say 400th!? Ever since architect Frank Lloyd Wright proposed his “mile high tower” in the 1950s, engineers and city planners have been working to achieve such a hyper-structure.

2    Holding 100,000 people or more, these Cities in the Sky, according to their proponents, would end urban sprawl, reduce pollution, and free up our dwindling natural landscape. Across the world, buildings rising half-amile high are being erected right now — with even taller ones on the drawing board.

3    But building such immense structures presents equally immense technological and social challenges. How high can we (and should we) go? Here’s how the designers and engineers of some of today’s most ambitious building projects are rising to these challenges.

“Weather” or Not We’ll Be Comfortable

4    Living a mile high might make you dizzy — not from the height, from the sway. Very tall buildings move in the breeze. They can even change how wind blows through a city, sometimes causing it to sweep pedestrians off their feet.

5    The solution? In the 101-story Taipei Tower, engineers solved the problem by installing a 730-ton pendulum weight. When the building swings in one direction, the weight swings the other, helping to cancel the building’s wind-induced sway. Chicago’s 2,000-foot-tall Spire (North America’s tallest building) is twisted like a corkscrew, to draw wind up and away from the ground. And Shanghai’s 1,600-foot World Financial Center has a hole through it near its top, to help relieve wind gusts.

Can We Find the Energy?

6    A single, mile-high building might house the population of an entire small city, vertically. How does it meet everyone’s energy needs?

7    London’s Citygate Ecotower may provide an answer. It has been designed to be the most eco-friendly skyscraper ever. Instead of glass or stone, Ecotower will be covered with solar cells. So instead of using miles of wire to conduct electricity to each apartment, the walls in this building will be able to make the power residents need. There are even plans to recover the energy from elevators as they rise and fall — like pistons in a giant engine.

Going (Way) Up

8    Speaking of elevators, a mile-high building would need dozens of elevators, working constantly,  to move everyone where they want to go. Rising over half a mile high, the United Arab Emirates’ Dubai Tower uses the fastest elevators in the world, topping 40 miles per hour. Japanese designers have proposed an omni-vator — it would travel up and down or from side to side, connecting all parts of a building. Residents near the top of a mile-high building might even find it more convenient to leave via a rooftop heliport.

High Alert

9    Fires, natural disasters, and even acts of terrorism that are dangers of city life all become greater threats as buildings rise higher. In Tokyo, designers of the proposed 1,800-foot Shimizu Super High-Rise are experimenting with pumping high pressure air through the building to prevent smoke from filling emergency exit corridors in the event of a skyscraper fire. Since Japan is also vulnerable to earthquakes, the Super High-Rise has been designed to float on high-tech foundation posts,  should the ground beneath it fail.

Alone Together

10    Social planners worry that very tall buildings may leave their occupants feeling alienated, cut off from the world and even each other. They warn that a mile-high skyscraper, if we can construct one, must not simply offer endless layers of identical housing. Planners stress the need to create community by including businesses, schools, shopping malls, even parks and recreational facilities at various levels of the structure.

(608 words)

1. Good thing your lab partner lives upstairs: 

幸好你的实验室伙伴就住在楼上。 

本句是 It’s a good thing that… 的省略形式。

2. hyper-structure :  超高建筑

前缀 hyper- 表示 more than usual。

又如：

a hyperintelligent person 

一个智力超常的人

3. “Weather” or Not We’ll Be Comfortable: 

高空是否气候宜人。 

本句中用了同音词 weather 代替 whether，暗示了这里 comfortable 指的是天气状况是否适宜，具有一定的幽默效果。

4. … sometimes causing it to sweep pedestrians off their feet. 

……有时候把路上的行人都吹得东倒西歪。

这个分词短语在句中作结果状语。

5. Speaking of elevators: 

提到电梯 

现在分词短语 speaking of 置于句首，表示说话人的态度，看问题的角度，或者对所叙述的情况进行解释，作句子的独立成分，其逻辑主语无需与句子的主语一致。

6. to move everyone where they want to go: 

把人们送往他们要去的地方

where they want to go 地点状语从句。where 引导定语从句时，从句前应有一个表示地点的名词作先行词，而状语从句前则无需先行词。

又如：

Go back where you came from.

你从何处来回何处去。(地点状语从句) 

Go back to the village where you came from. 

回到你来的那个村子里去。(定语从句)

7. Rising over half a mile high, the United Arab Emirate’s Dubai Tower uses the fastest elevators in the world, topping 40 miles per hour. 

阿联酋的迪拜大厦高半英里，使用了世界上速度最快的电梯，时速超过40英里。

本句中分词短语 Rising over half a mile high和topping 40 miles per hour 都作定语，分别修饰 the United Arab Emirate’s Dubai Tower 和 the fastest elevators in the world。将定语修饰语分别放在句子的前后，可以使句子的主谓宾结构更为紧凑。

8. Japanese designers have proposed an omni-vator — it would travel up and down or side to side, connecting all parts of a building. 

日本设计师提出了一种不仅能上下运行而且能左右运行的全方位电梯，将大楼的所有部分都连接起来。

本句中，作者用前缀 omni- 创造了单词 omni-vator (全方位电梯)，前缀 omni- 表示“全部、到处”。

又如：

omnipresent    无所不在的

分词短语 connecting all parts of a building 用作结果状语。

9. should the ground beneath it fail: 

万一地面塌陷 

这个从句中用了虚拟语气的倒装，省略了连词if，正常语序是 if the ground beneath should fail。从句中用虚拟语气 should do，表示将来不太可能发生的情况。又如：

This computer is of good quality. If it should break down within the first year, we will repair it at our expense.

这台电脑质量很好。倘若使用第一年就坏了，我们将出钱修理。

10. … very tall buildings may leave their occupants feeling alienate. 

……居住在非常高的大楼里，人们会感到孤独。

本句中的结构 leave sb. doing sth. 表示“使某人做某事”。又如：

The incident left her feeling confused. 

这件事使她感到困惑。

* Read the following paragraphs until you have learned them by heart.

Holding 100,000 people or more, these Cities in the Sky, according to their proponents, would end urban sprawl, reduce pollution, and free up our dwindling natural landscape. Across the world, buildings rising half-a-mile high are being erected right now — with even taller ones on the drawing board.

But building such immense structures presents equally immense technological and social challenges. How high can we (and should we) go? Here’s how the designers and engineers of some of today’s most ambitious building projects are rising to these challenges.