Enjoy Rendering!: Сборник текстов для перевода и реферирования. Батурина С.А. - 16 стр.

       Whether the government is likely to offer much more than sym-                              What to Do about Slums?
pathy is doubtful, given the massive development plans that Beijing,
Shanghai and other cities have in mind. Beijing will hold the Olympic              Slums are growing fast. The solution must begin with property rights.
Games in 2008 which will involve a lot of work for the demolition                    In Pakistan they are katchi abadis, in Cuba focos insalubres, in
teams. Shanghai has been relocating people at a rate of 80 000 a year        India bustees and in Brazil favelas. Whatever the local name for slums,
since 2000 and plans to move another 400 000 by 2007 (the city wants         there are a lot of them and they are growing fast. A new report, “The
a new look for the 2010 World Fair).                                         Challenge of Slums” by UN-Habitat, the United Nations agency re-
       In September, 152 lawyers in Shanghai formed a group to give
                                                                             sponsible for "human settlements", says that in 2001 just under a bil-
legal aid to those being moved out. But other, unnamed lawyers have
                                                                             lion people were living in slums-about a third of the world's city dwell-
been quoted as saying that without laws clarifying the rights of the up-
                                                                             ers. In the last decade, urban populations in less developed regions in-
rooted, talk of protecting their interests is "idle". They might also have
                                                                             creased by a third. On present trends, says the UN report, 2 billion peo-
mentioned one Shanghai lawyer, Zheng Enchong, who argued on be-
                                                                             ple could be living in slums by 2030.
half of the displaced. He was arrested in June on what human-rights
                                                                                     In Africa, many parts of the Middle East, Latin America and
groups say are bogus charges.
                                                                             Asia, migrants are leaving farm land which is unable to support them,
      1. Vocabulary notes:                                                   and arriving in cities which are unprepared to deal with them. This has
      1) resort – прибегать, обращаться                                      been a long-term trend, and is unlikely to abate no matter how awful
      2) grievance – жалоба, недовольство                                    the slums become. In 1800, only 2 % of the world's population was
      3) makeover – переделывание                                            urbanised; by 2008 more than half of the world's population will be.
      4) attune – настраивать, делать гармоничным                            Because such migration is so predictable, and long established, it might
      5) breakneck – опасный, стремительный                                  seem surprising that many governments are ill-equipped for it. But
      6) shabby – зд. убогий, ветхий, захудалый                              there is little new in that either: the now-rich countries fared just as
      7) demolish – разрушать, уничтожать                                    badly when their cities first began to grow rapidly.
      8) trigger – приводить в действие, вызвать                                     What can be done? Lessons from history make it clear what
      9) frenzied – бешенный, безумный, неистовый                            should not be done: ignoring slums or harassing the people that live in
      10) greed – жадность, алчность                                         them through summary evictions and clearances. Although few gov-
      11) connivance – потворство, попустительство, молчаливое               ernments openly advocate such repressive policies, arbitrary evictions
согласие                                                                     are still common in many developing countries. In any case, slum
      12) intimidate – запугивать, угрожать, шантажировать                   eradication and resettlement create more problems than they solve.
      13) meagre – скудный, недостаточный                                    Most residents pushed out of their homes soon have little option but to
      14) uproot – насильно выселять с места жительства                      return to the same area, because they need the work that drew them to
      15) idle – зд. бесполезный, тщетный, пустой                            the city in the first place.
      16) bogus – поддельный, фальшивый, мнимый                                      Improving slums, rather than relocating their residents, is a much
                                                                             better approach. But in developing countries, resources to build new
      2. Make up a plan of the text in English.                              housing rarely exist. Instead, government-aided "self help" is more re-
                                                                             alistic. Loans for home improvement and investment in infrastructure
      3. Give a summary of the text.                                         are crucial for upgrading slums. But the central problem is that slum

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