1 . Is the west falling out of love with the car? For environmentalists it seems a(n) _________ dream, but it is happening. While those with young families may carry on using four wheels, a combination of our ageing societies and a new attitude among the young seems to be _________ our 20th-century car addiction. Somewhere along the road, we reached the high point of the car and are now moving down the other side.

That _________ takes several forms. Sales of new cars have almost halved in the US, down from nearly 11 million in 1985 to about 5.5 million now. We shouldn't _________ that to a great degree, though. Cars last longer these days, and sales go up and down with the economy. But we have hit peak car ownership, too. And, more to the point, peak per-capita travel (人均出行).

The phenomenon was first _________ in The Road ... Less Traveled, a 2008 report by the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, but had been going on largely unnoticed for years. Japan reached it in the 1990s. They talk there of "demotorisation". The west had its _________ point in 2004. That year the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia and Sweden all saw the start of a decline in the number of kilometres and average person travelled in a car that _________ today.

What could be driving us _________? Fuel costs and rising insurance premiums (保险费) may be a factor. And urban congestion, combined with an absence of parking places and congestion charging, makes an increasing number of us look on the car as a(n) _________ way to move around in cities where there are public transport alternatives.

Demographics (人口统计数据) are another possible __________. It is surely no __________ that "peak car" happened first in Japan, which has the world's oldest population. Pensioners do not drive to work, and many don't drive at all. There is also the rise of "virtual commuters" who work from home through the Internet.

Besides these new __________ pattern, leisure lifestyle are also changing. The biggest __________ in car use in the US is among people under 35. The number of American 17-year-olds with a drivers' licence has fallen from about three-quarters to about half since 1998. Twenty-somethings have recently gone from driving more than the average to driving less.

Social scientists detect a new "culture of urbanisms". The stylish way to live these days is in inner-city apartments, not the __________. Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist at the University of Toronto in Canada, points out that the young shop online, telecommute, live in walk-able city neighborhoods near public transport and rely more on social media and less on fact-to-face visiting. Given those changes, they can think of better ways to spend their money than buying a(n) __________.