CAT 2019 RC passage with Solution 06

The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents. To a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. I trained as a biologist and to my eye, they look organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density—1 million people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.

Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, people leave their lights on all day. But in most slums recycling is literally a way of life. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 ragpickers. Six thousand tons of rubbish are sorted every day. In 2007, the Economist reported that in Vietnam and Mozambique, “Waves of gleaners sift the sweepings of Hanoi’s streets, just as Mozambiquan children pick over the rubbish of Maputo’s main tip. Every city in Asia and Latin America has an industry based on gathering up old cardboard boxes.” . . .

In his 1985 article, Calthorpe made a statement that still jars with most people: “The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.” “Green Manhattan” was the inflammatory title of a 2004 New Yorker article by David Owen. “By the most significant measures,” he wrote, “New York is the greenest

community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world . . . The key to New York’s relative environmental benignity is its extreme compactness. . . . Placing one and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteful.” He went on to note that this very compactness forces people to live in the world’s most energy-efficient apartment buildings. . . .

Urban density allows half of humanity to live on 2.8 per cent of the land. . . . Consider just the infrastructure efficiencies. According to a 2004 UN report: “The concentration of population and enterprises in urban areas greatly reduces the unit cost of piped water, sewers, drains, roads, electricity, garbage collection, transport, health care, and schools.” . . .

[T]he nationally subsidised city of Manaus in northern Brazil “answers the question” of how to stop deforestation: give people decent jobs. Then they can afford houses, and gain security. One hundred thousand people who would otherwise be deforesting the jungle around Manaus are now prospering in town making such things as mobile phones and televisions. . . .

Of course, fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease and injustice as much as business, innovation, education and entertainment. . . . But if they are overall a net good for those who move there, it is because cities offer more than just jobs. They are transformative: in the slums, as well as the office towers and leafy suburbs, the progress is from hick to metropolitan to cosmopolitan . . .

Question 1:
From the passage it can be inferred that cities are good places to live in for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that they:

1. help prevent destruction of the environment.
2. have suburban areas as well as office areas.
3. offer employment opportunities.
4. contribute to the cultural transformation of residents.

Question 2:
Which one of the following statements would undermine the author’s stand regarding the greenness of cities?

1. The compactness of big cities in the West increases the incidence of violent crime.
2. The high density of cities leads to an increase in carbon dioxide and global warming.
3. Over the last decade the cost of utilities has been increasing for city dwellers.
4. Sorting through rubbish contributes to the rapid spread of diseases in the slums.

Question 3:
We can infer that Calthorpe’s statement “still jars” with most people because most people:

1. do not regard cities as good places to live in.
2. consider cities to be very crowded and polluted.
3. regard cities as places of disease and crime.
4. do not consider cities to be eco-friendly places.

Question 4:
In the context of the passage, the author refers to Manaus in order to:

1. explain where cities source their labour for factories.
2. promote cities as employment hubs for people.
3. explain how urban areas help the environment.
4. describe the infrastructure efficiencies of living in a city.

Question 5:
According to the passage, squatter cities are environment-friendly for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

1. they recycle material.
2. their transportation is energy efficient.
3. they sort out garbage.
4. their streets are kept clean.

CAT 2019 RC sets