Charles Montgomery

Is urban design really powerful enough to make or break happiness?1. 城市設(shè)計真的足以成就或毀滅幸福嗎？The question deserves consideration, because the happy city message is taking root around the world.

If one was to judge by sheer wealth, the last half-century should have been an ecstatically happy time for people in the US and other rich nations such as Canada, Japan and Great Britain.2. 如果單純以財富衡量，那么過去50年應(yīng)該是美國和其他富裕國家如加拿大、日本和英國居民幸福感爆棚的時期。sheer： 完全的，全然的；ecstatically： 狂喜地，心醉神迷地。And yet the boom decades of the late 20th century were not accompanied by a boom in wellbeing.3. boom： 繁榮，激增；accompany： 伴隨，陪伴；wellbeing： 幸福，安康。The British got richer by more than 40% between 1993 and 2012, but the rate of psychiatric disorders and neuroses grew.4. psychiatric disorder： 精神異常，精神疾??；neuroses： 神經(jīng)癥，神經(jīng)衰弱癥。

Just before the crash of 2008, a team of Italian economists, led by Stefano Bartolini, tried to account for that seemingly inexplicablegap between rising income and flatlining happiness in the US.5. 在2008年金融危機爆發(fā)之前，由斯蒂法諾·巴爾托利尼帶領(lǐng)的一隊意大利經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家試圖解釋美國人收入提高與幸福感低迷之間看似頗令人費解的差距。account for： 說明（原因、理由等），作出解釋；inexplicable： 無法解釋的，莫名其妙的；flatlining： 保持在較低水平的。The Italians tried removing various components of economic and social data from their models, and found that the only factor powerful enough to hold down people’s self-reported happiness in the face of all that wealth was the country’s declining social capital: the social networks and interactions that keep us connected with others.6. 這些意大利經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家盡力把各種經(jīng)濟(jì)和社會數(shù)據(jù)因素排除在模型以外，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)唯一能夠在財富面前降低人們自我幸福感的因素是本國不斷減少的社會資本：即人與人之間相互聯(lián)系的交際網(wǎng)絡(luò)和互動。social capital： 社會資本，是指個人在組織結(jié)構(gòu)中，利用自己的位置而獲取利益的能力。It was even more corrosive7. corrosive： 侵蝕性的，（對社會、個人情感等）有害的。than the income gap between rich and poor.

高得離譜的房價、擁擠不堪的交通、昂貴的物價讓很多年輕人開始逃離“北上廣”，人們不禁開始反思：幸福生活的要素是什么？研究表明：人的自我幸福感與財富增長并不呈現(xiàn)正相關(guān)關(guān)系，相反，卻與其每天花在通勤上的時間、個人的交際網(wǎng)絡(luò)、生活節(jié)奏等有著莫大的聯(lián)系。本文揭露了城市生活的幸福要素，也為我們提供了一些幸福生活秘笈。

As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert.8. 就像我們經(jīng)常抱怨他人一樣，沒有什么比社交荒漠對人的精神健康更有害的了。The more connected we are to family and community, the less likely we are to experience heart attacks, strokes, cancer and depression. Connected people sleep better at night. They live longer. They consistently report being happier.

There is a clear connection between social deficit and the shape of cities.9. 人際赤字與城市形態(tài)之間存在明顯的關(guān)聯(lián)。A Swedish study found that people who endure more than a 45-minute commute were 40% more likely to divorce. People who live in monofunctional, car-dependent neighbourhoods outside urban centres are much less trusting of other people than people who live in walkable neighbourhoods where housing is mixed with shops,services and places to work.10. 比起那些居住在適于步行且民居與商鋪、服務(wù)和工作場所混合的社區(qū)的人們，住在城市中心之外、出行必須依靠汽車的單一功能社區(qū)的人們對待他人的信任比較少。monofunctional：單功能的，功能單一的。

The finding was seemingly straightforward: the longer the drive, the less happy people were. Before you dismiss this as numbingly obvious, keep in mind that they were testing not for drive satisfaction, but for life satisfaction.11. dismiss： 駁回，拒絕接受；numbingly：麻木地；keep in mind： 記住，考慮到。People were choosing commutes that made their entire lives worse.

The sad part is that the more we flock to high-status cities for the good life—money, opportunity, novelty—the more crowded,expensive, polluted and congested those places become.12. 令人難過是，隨著更多的人涌向大都市尋找幸福生活——金錢、機遇、新鮮感，這些城市也就變得更擁擠，生活成本更加昂貴，污染更加嚴(yán)重，交通更堵塞。high-status： 地位高的；novelty： 新奇、新穎的事物；congested： 擁擠的，堵塞的。The result Surveys show that Londoners are among the least happy people in the UK, despite the city being the richest region in the UK.

When we talk about cities, we usually end up talking about how various places look, and perhaps how it feels to be there. But to stop there misses half the story, because the way we experience most parts of cities is at velocity:we glide past on the way to somewhere else.13. 但停留這個層面會讓你看不到問題的另一面，因為我們感受城市的某一部分時總是走馬觀花：匆匆而過急著趕往下一個地點。velocity： 速度，速率；glide： 滑過，流逝。City life is as much about moving through landscapes as it is about being in them. Robert Judge, a 48-year-old husband and father, once wrote to a Canadian radio show explaining how much he enjoyed going grocery14. grocery： 食品雜貨店。shopping on his bicycle. Judge’s confession would have been unremarkable if he did not happen to live in Saskatoon,Saskatchewan, where the average temperature in January hovers around -17C.15. 若非住在一月份平均溫度徘徊在攝氏零下17度的加拿大薩斯喀徹溫省薩斯卡通，賈奇的自白也就沒什么值得關(guān)注的了。confession： 表白，自白；hover： 徘徊，盤旋。The city stays frozen and snowy for almost half the year. Judge’s pleasure in an experience that seems slower, more difficult and considerably more uncomfortable than the alternative might seem bizarre.16. alternative： 可供選擇的事物，其他選擇；bizarre： 奇怪的，離奇的。He explained it by way of a story: sometimes, he said, he would pick up his three-year-old son from nursery and put him on the back seat of his tandem bike and they would pedal home along the South Saskatchewan river.17. nursery： 幼兒園；tandem bike： 雙人自行車；pedal：踩自行車，騎自行車。The snow would muffle18. muffle： 裹住，圍住。the noise of the city. Dusk would paint the sky in colours so exquisite that Judge could not begin to find names for them.19. dusk： 黃昏，薄暮；exquisite： 精美的，精美的。The snow would reflect those hues20. hue： 色彩，色調(diào)。. It would glow like the sky, and Judge would breathe in the cold air and hear his son breathing behind him, and he would feel as though together they had become part of winter itself.

Drivers experience plenty of emotional dividends21. dividend： 利益，好處。.They report feeling much more in charge of22. in charge of： 負(fù)責(zé)，管理。their lives than public transport users. An upmarket vehicle isloaded with symbolic value that offers a powerful, if temporary, boost in status.23. 一輛高檔的汽車具有象征價值，能夠有力地，即便是暫時地，提升擁有者的身份地位。upmarket： 高檔的，高級的。Yet despite these romantic feelings, half of commuters living in big cities and suburbs claim to dislike the heroic journey they must make every day.24. 盡管感覺甚為浪漫，但這些生活在大城市和城郊的通勤者們，一半都說不喜歡每天不得不奔波的這段艱苦旅程。The urban system neutralises25. neutralize： 中和，抵消。their power.

Driving in traffic is harrowing26. harrow： 使苦惱，折磨。for both brain and body. The blood of people who drive in cities is a stew of stress hormones.27. stew： 煩惱，焦慮；hormone： 荷爾蒙，激素。The worse the traffic, the more your system is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, the fightor-flight juices that, in the short-term, get your heart pumping faster, dilate your air passages and help sharpen your alertness, but in the long-term can make you ill.28. 交通狀況越糟糕，身體系統(tǒng)里產(chǎn)生的腎上腺素和皮質(zhì)醇就越多。從短期來看，這些應(yīng)急體液讓你的心臟跳得更快，氣道脹大，提高你的警覺性；但從長期來看，它們可使你致病。 adrenaline： 腎上腺素；cortisol： 腎上腺皮質(zhì)醇；fight-or-flight： “打斗或逃跑”，也就是面對緊急情況作出反應(yīng)；dilate：使擴(kuò)大，使膨脹。Researchers for Hewlett-Packard convinced volunteers in England to wear electrode caps during their commutes and found that whether they were driving or taking the train, peak-hour travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police facing mobs of angry protesters.29. 惠普公司的研究表明，英格蘭的志愿者在上下班途中戴上測試電極帽，實驗發(fā)現(xiàn)無論是自己開車，還是乘坐列車，高峰期時人們遭受的壓力比戰(zhàn)斗機飛行員或面對一群憤怒的抗議者的防暴警察還要大。 Hewlett-Packard： 美國惠普公司；electrode：電極，電流導(dǎo)體；mob： 民眾。

But one group of commuters report enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam30. under one’s own steam： 憑借自己的力量。, like Robert Judge. They walk. They run. They ride bicycles.

Why would travelling more slowly and using more effort offer more satisfaction than driving? Part of the answer exists in basic human physiology31. physiology： 生理機能。. We were born to move. Immobility is to the human body what rust is to the classic car. Stop moving long enough, and your muscles will atrophy32. atrophy： 萎縮，衰退。. Bones will weaken. Blood will clot33. clot： 凝結(jié)成塊，堵塞。. You will find it harder to concentrate and solve problems. Immobility is not merely a state closer to death: it hastens34. hasten： 加速，加緊。it.

In 1969, a consortium35. consortium： 財團(tuán)，聯(lián)盟。of European industrial interests charged a young American economist,Eric Britton, with figuring out how people would movethrough cities in the future. Cities should strive to embrace complexity, not only in transportation systems but in human experience, says Britton, who is still working in that field and lives in Paris. He advises cities and corporations to abandon old mobility, a system rigidly organised entirely around one way of moving, and embrace new mobility, a future in which we would all be free to move in the greatest variety of ways.36. 他建議城市和公司放棄舊流動模式——完全基于單一流動的僵化組織系統(tǒng)，而采取新的流動模式，也就是未來我們出行將擁有多種多樣的交通方法可選擇。

To demonstrate how radically37. radically： 根本地，徹底地。urban systems can build freedom in motion, Britton led me down from his office, out on to Rue Joseph Bara. We paused by a row of sturdy-looking38. sturdy-looking： 強壯的，強健的。bicycles. Britton swept his wallet above a metallic post and pulled one free from its berth.39. 布里頓拿著錢包掃過一根金屬樁，然后從泊車位中拉出一輛自行車?！癊t voilà40. Et voilà： 法語日常用語，意思為“看哪！瞧哪！”!Freedom!” he said, grinning41. grin： 露齒而笑，咧嘴笑。. Since the Paris bike scheme,Vélib’42. Vélib： 巴黎的公共自行車租借服務(wù)項目。, was introduced, it has utterly changed the face of mobility. Each bicycle in the Vélib’ fleet gets used between three and nine times every day. That’s as many as 200,000 trips a day. Dozens of cities have now dabbled43. dabble： 涉足，嘗試。in shared bike programmes, including Lyon, Montreal, Melbourne,New York. In 2010, London introduced a system, dubbed44. dub： 把……稱為，給……起綽號。Boris Bikes for the city’s bike-mad mayor, Boris Johnson. In Paris, and around the world, new systems of sharing are setting drivers free. As more people took to bicycles in Vélib’s first year, the number of bike accidents rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems to repeat wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike,the safer the streets become for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road.45. 這一現(xiàn)象反復(fù)出現(xiàn)在自行車使用人數(shù)激增的城市：騎自行車的人越多，馬路對于騎自行車的人來說也就越安全，部分原因是當(dāng)意識到路上騎自行車人越來越多時，駕駛員就會更加小心地駕駛。spike： 突然增長，激增。There is safety in numbers.