Boston wants to be smarter. The city has taken advantage of technologies to become more responsive to its residents' needs. But technology alone is not sufficient to make today's cities liveable. Boston has discovered that it also needs to reach the old-fashioned low-tech community and integrate that technology with city life.
Kris Carter rolled out Boston's smart city program in 2014. It started with an App that residents could download to report locations where sidewalks needed repair. The city sorted out those reports and ranked them in a database, which repair crews used to prioritize their work.
The system worked beautifully, except for one problem: most of the alerts(警报) came from wealthier neighborhoods, where the concentration of smartphone - equipped residents was highest. "The complaints from the App didn't always correlate with the greatest community need for repairs, " explains Carter.
Carter's group has moved away from the model common to many smart city initiatives of letting tech-savvy(精通技术的)residents drive the process. Instead, they run meetings to find out what problems people in different neighborhoods care about solving. When it came to sidewalks, Boston introduced a second method of collecting repair tips, hiring people to get out and walk the city's 1,700 miles of sidewalks to take notes on their condition.
Whether using low-tech or high-tech approaches, says Carter, to stay smart, a city needs to continually reassess its options to spot opportunities to improve residents' lives. Take the sidewalk repair program, walking on the streets was proved a useful, if inefficient way to prioritize repair needs. But last year the group found that walkers' mobile phones could be tracked as they moved along the streets, and that data could be analyzed to identify sidewalk routes which are most often used by neighborhoods.
“Combined with our other sidewalk information, that gave us an even better way to predict where faster repairs would do the most good," says Carter,"We're really always looking for whatever mix of approaches best solves the problem."
12. What is the first paragraph mainly about?
A.The citizens' life. | B.The city's reputation. |
C.The city's management. | D.The benefits of technology. |
13. What problem did Kris Carter's team meet when carrying out their program?
A.They faced many technical obstacles. |
B.They couldn't serve all residents well. |
C.They were not supported by residents. |
D.They were annoyed by being short-staffed. |
14. Which of the following might Kris Carter most agree with?
A.Maximizing the benefits of technology. |
B.Mixing approaches for solving problems. |
C.Giving full play to the power of residents. |
D.Letting tech companies be a leading role. |
15. What can be a suitable title for the text?
A.A Smart City: More Than Just Tech |
B.A City with Intelligent Facilities |
C.Joint-effort in City Construction |
D.The Modernization of a City |