The garden city was largely the invention of Ebenezer Howard (1850 – 1928). After immigrating from England to the USA, and an unsuccessful attempt to make a living as a farmer, he moved to Chicago, where he saw the reconstruction of the city after the disastrous fire of 1871. In those days, it was nicknamed "the Garden City", almost certainly the source of Howard's name for his later building plan of towns．Returning to London, Howard developed his design in the 1880s and 1890s, drawing on ideas that were popular at the time, but creating a unique combination of designs．

The nineteenth-century poor city was in many ways a terrible place, dirty and crowded; but it offered economic and social opportunities．At the same time, the British countryside was in fact equally unattractive: though it promised fresh air and nature, it suffered from agricultural depression（蕭條）and it offered neither enough work and wages, nor much social life．Howard's idea was to combine the best of town and country in a new kind of settlement, the garden city．Howard's idea was that a group of people should set up a company, borrowing money to establish a garden city in the depressed countryside; far enough from existing cities to make sure that the land was bought at the bottom price．

Garden cities would provide a central public open space, radial avenues and connecting industries．They would be surrounded by a much larger area of green belt, also owned by the company, containing not merely farms but also some industrial institutions．As more and more people moved in, the garden city would reach its planned limit-Howard suggested 32,000 people; then, another would be started a short distance away．Thus, over time, there would develop a vast planned house collection, extending almost without limit; within it, each garden city would offer a wide rang of jobs and services, but each would also be connected to the others by a rapid transportation system, thus giving all the economic and social opportunities of a big city．

小題1:How did Howard get the name for his building plan of garden cities?

A．By using the nickname of the reconstructed Chicago．

B．Through his observation of the country life．

C．Through the combination of different ideas．

D．By taking other people's advice．

小題2:The underlined phrase "drawing on "in Paragraph 1 probably means______．

A．making comments onB．giving an explanation of

C．giving a description ofD．making use of

小題3:What can we learn about garden cities from the last paragraph?

A．Each one would continue to become larger

B．People would live and work in the same place

C．Their number would continue to rise

D．Each one would contain a certain type of business

小題4:What could be the best title for the passage?

A．City and Countryside

B．The Invention of the Garden City

C．A New City in Chicago

D．A Famous Garden City in England