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ASSIGNMENT 3: First Summary

Due: by 28TH January (dropbox in Module 2)

Length: 200-250 words
Weight: 5%

Please use an appropriate 12 point font and double space your work (-10% if incorrectly
formatted). Upload your assignment either in .doc/.docx format or as a PDF in Module 2 on
Brightspace.

This task offers you a low-stakes chance to get feedback on your summary writing skills from
me before the second summary and persuasive response assignment is due.

Please read Dick Thompson’s “Asphalt Jungle,” below, and summarize its contents in about 200-
250 words.

Remember what you’ve learned from my lectures about the functions of summaries, as well as
the advice I’ve given you on writing effective summaries. I’ve deliberately chosen an older
article to make it less tempting for you to fall into commenting on the argument. A summary is a
brief restatement in your own words of a text’s main ideas, concentrating an extended idea or
arguments into a sentence or more of your own. You need to identify the original text and
demonstrate your understanding of that text. Summaries are usually at least 60% shorter than the
original text, often by eliminating the original’s examples, asides, and analogies. Summaries
present the original author’s main ideas and no not contain your interpretations or opinions. Use
your own words and do not include quotations from the original text. Summaries rely on
standard signal phrases, such as “According to [author’s name]” or “[Author’s name] argues.”

Steps to writing a successful summary:

a. Read the text to get a sense of the content and general focus.
b. Restate the article’s thesis simply and in your own words. What’s it about?
c. Restate each paragraphs topic simply and in your own words. What are the main ideas the
author uses to support the general idea or thesis of the text?
d. Organize your summary to reflect the organization of ideas in the original text.
e. Edit. State the ideas of the text as concisely and clearly as possible

You will be addressing an audience who wishes to be informed on the content of the article, so
make sure you include the information that seems most necessary for understanding Thompson’s
analysis and argument.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have about the assignment. I will be marking your work
according to the standards for first-year writing (included in the syllabus and available from the
university website).
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Asphalt Jungle
By Dick Thompson

Beverly Hills is one of the hottest places to live--for Egyptians. This new Beverly Hills is
among the latest suburbs to bloom in the desert outside Cairo, a city growing so fast that
newcomers are taking over rooftops and cemeteries. Cairo (pop. 7.7 million) is the epitome of
congestion and sprawl. It’s what happens when the human population multiplies and spreads out
of control. But the problem of unrestrained growth isn't confined to developing countries with
high birthrates. In England, as much land as there is in all of Wales has been converted si nce
1960 from "areas of tranquility," as the English say, into malls and suburbs. One of the fastest -
growing regions in the U.S. is the once wild country around Yellowstone National Park. In fact,
perhaps the only place on Earth coming close to containing sprawl is Tokyo, but that's only
because the city has taken up nearly all the surrounding Kanto Plain, and growth has nowhere
else to go in this part of sea-locked Japan.
The planet sure seems smaller and smaller these days. The "wide-open spaces" that the
Grammy-winning Dixie Chicks sing about are becoming few and far between. In little more than
a century, humanity has gone from the agrarian age to the age of megacities. Four decades ago,
there were only three cities with more than 8 million people: New York, London and Tokyo. By
2015 there will be 33 such cities, 27 of them--like Cairo--in the developing world.
The urbanization of the globe is more than an aesthetic problem. Human sprawl threatens
the habitat of most animal and plant species--except for cockroaches, rats, pigeons, crabgrass and
other organisms that thrive with mankind. Relentless human expansion is the main reason the
world is fast losing its biodiversity, raising the specter that we will eventually live, in the words
of writer David Quammen, on a "planet of weeds." If that danger doesn't seem imminent,
consider this: sprawl is paving over the land we need to grow our food. Since 1981 the amount of
land around the world devoted to raising grain has fallen 7%. Increased agricultural producti vity
has made up for that loss, but the Green Revolution may be reaching the point of diminishing
returns. In 1998 the world grain harvest declined 2% from the previous year, even as there were
1.4% more mouths to feed.
Sprawl is understandable, maybe even unavoidable, in countries where the population is
still growing rapidly. But it is more difficult to explain in the U.S. and other rich countries with
lower birthrates. In Ohio the amount of land developed around urban areas between 1960 and
1990 grew more than five times as fast as the population.
Maybe it’s just a response to endless complaints about suburban traffic jams, but U.S.
politicians are starting to pay attention to the sprawl problem. Presidential candidate Al Gore has
raised the subject, and Maryland Governor Parris Glendening sounds downright alarmed. "Every
time we cut down one more forest or sell off another acre of farmland, we have permanently lost
more of our finite natural resources," says Glendening. "Sprawl costs taxpayers dollars to
support new infrastructure, costs natural resources that we know are not unlimited, and costs us
as a society in lost opportunities to invest in our existing communities and neighborhoods."
No one has an easy way to eliminate sprawl, but there are at least four strategies for containing
it:
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SET GROWTH BOUNDARIES

Borrowing on the idea behind the famed greenbelts surrounding English villages, many state and
local governments in the U.S. are trying to concentrate growth in some places while sparing
others. Glendening has decreed that roads and sewer lines will be provided only in designated
areas. The oldest American experiment along these lines is the growth boundary around
Portland, Oregon. Since 1979 development has been forbidden outside an area that covers 24
municipalities and three counties. The plan has kept sprawl in check, but competition for limited
space has made the city an expensive place to live. Even if governments have the best intentions,
growth boundaries are hard to maintain, as has already been found out in Britain, where
greenbelts have come under pressure from developers.

PURCHASE LAND
If governments want to protect land, the easiest way is to buy it and take it off the market. New
Jersey has issued bonds to raise $1 billion for the preservation of farms and woodlands, and the
U.S. Congress mandates the use of $900 million each year to purchase undeveloped land, though
it always falls short of allocating the full amount. In Japan activists like Yoshitoshi Era have
helped prod local governments to step up land buying. "We have to protect what is left," he says.
Private groups and wealthy individuals can open their pocketbooks too. Preservation-minded
Doug Tompkins, founder of the Esprit clothing company, has bought 640,000 acres (259,000
hectares) of forest land in Chile.

BUILD MASS TRANSIT

If a city has good rail and bus lines, then development can be concentrated around mass-transit
stops rather than spread out all over the countryside. Public transport is still a tough sell in the
U.S., but rail lines in most of the world have kept sprawl from being even worse than it is. Says
Tony Burton, a member of the Council for the Protection of Rural England: "The dilemma is, if
you don't build roads, what do you do? Well, for a start, you prevent sprawl." Curitiba, Brazil, is
an up-and-coming city in which an efficient bus system has helped hold down road building.

RESTORE INNER CITIES

In the U.S. especially, development moves out of town while perfectly good urban property is
abandoned. Perverse incentives often encourage the trend. Banks deny mortgages in declining
neighborhoods, and environmental regulations may make it more expensive for a developer to
reclaim an abandoned urban site than to build on virgin land outside the city. But places like
Baltimore, Maryland, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, have proved that downtowns can be revived.
President Bill Clinton in 1996 signed an Executive Order requiring all new U.S. offices to be
placed in urban areas if possible, preferably in historic buildings.
That kind of action makes sense. For decades to come, population growth will put more
pressure on our wide-open spaces. So, before the human race gobbles up any more land, we
could make much better use of what we've already taken.