Fast Cities(3/3)
From Chicago to Shanghai, urban centers that are shaping our future

Green Leaders
Chicago, Illinois
Mayor Richard Daley has overseen a downtown renaissance and the planting of 500,000 new trees. In the wake of a deadly 1995 heat wave, he has also launched a raft of aggressive initiatives to cool the city while conserving energy.
Stockholm, Sweden
Home to almost 2,500 green-sector companies, Stockholm’s Hammarby SjÖstad district is a living eco-laboratory of 4,000 apartments with quadruple-glazed windows, ovens and cookers that run on biogas from wastewater , and central heating wired to photovoltaics.
Portland, Oregon
Portland is at the forefront of the “eat local” revolution, in which individuals and restaurants buy directly from area farmers to preserve livelihoods and open space. With 13 farmer’s markets, and nearby world-class vineyards, residents not only buy local but they eat and drink well too.
Vancouver, Canada
Vancouver is home to a booming electronic-gaming industry and a bustling port—not to mention the 2010 Olympics. Its EcoDensity initiative aims to focus that growth by developing more crowded neighborhoods at the city center. The dual goal: to build sustainable beighborhoods with the scale to make green energy technologies affordable and to preserve surrounding forest and mountain ecosystems.
On the verge: Minneapolis, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Tallahassee, Florida
High-Tech Hot Spots
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
This city aspires to be the high-tech center of Southeast Asia. It’s building a whole new city on reclaimed swampland to the south, with broad avenues, gleaming housing developments , and dedicated tech-industry clusters.
Chandigarh, India
Chandigarh is investing $865 million to build one of India’s biggest IT parks. Attracted by solid infrastructure, a cosmopolitan downtown, and a pool of young, educated workers, technology companies are flocking to this lush city—the nation’s wealthiest—in the Himalayan foothills.
Boise, Idaho
Potatoes: Yes, Boise has those. But the real action is in online publishing and broadcasting, where employment is up 650 percent since 2000, Wireless telecom is plenty hot, too.
On the verge: Des Moines, lowa; San Diego, Calfornia

Vocabulary Focus
livelihood (n) the way you earn the money you need to pay for food, a place to live, clothing, etc.
cluster (n) a group of similar things that are close together, sometimes surrounding something
cosmopolitan (adj) containing or having experience of people and things from many different parts of the world
Specialized terms
Photovoltaics (n) 太阳能设备；光电设备devices used to convert sunlight directly into electricity

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