Passages
Direction for Reading Comprehension: The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents. To a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. I trained as a biologist and to my eye, they look organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have a maximum density of —1 million people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.
Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, people leave their lights on all day. But in most slums recycling is literally a way of life. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 ragpickers. Six thousand tons of rubbish are sorted every day. In 2007, the Economist reported that in Vietnam and Mozambique, “Waves of gleaners sift the sweepings of Hanoi’s streets, just as Mozambiquan children pick over the rubbish of Maputo’s main tip. Every city in Asia and Latin America has an industry based on gathering up old cardboard boxes.” . . .
In his 1985 article, Calthorpe made a statement that still jars with most people: “The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.” “Green Manhattan” was the inflammatory title of a 2004 New Yorker article by David Owen. “By the most significant measures,” he wrote, “New York is the greenest
community in the United States and one of the greenest cities in the world . . . The key to New York’s relative environmental benignity is its extreme compactness. . . . Placing one and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteful.” He went on to note that this very compactness forces people to live in the world’s most energy-efficient apartment buildings. . . .
Urban density allows half of humanity to live on 2.8 percent of the land. . . . Consider just the infrastructure efficiencies. According to a 2004 UN report: “The concentration of population and enterprises in urban areas greatly reduces the unit cost of piped water, sewers, drains, roads, electricity, garbage collection, transport, health care, and schools.” . . .
[T]he nationally subsidized city of Manaus in northern Brazil “answers the question” of how to stop deforestation: give people decent jobs. Then they can afford houses, and gain security. One hundred thousand people who would otherwise be deforesting the jungle around Manaus are now prospering in town making such things as mobile phones and televisions. . . .
Of course, fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease, and injustice as much as business, innovation, education, and entertainment. . . . But if they are overall a net good for those who move there, it is because cities offer more than just jobs. They are transformative: in the slums, as well as the office towers and leafy suburbs, the progress is from hick to metropolitan to cosmopolitan . . .
Question for CAT 2019 Reading Comprehension Questions- 8
Try yourself:From the passage, it can be inferred that cities are good places to live in for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that they:
Explanation
From the sentence, "One hundred thousand people who would otherwise be deforesting the jungle around Manaus are now prospering in town making such things as mobile phones and televisions" given in the passage, option A can be inferred.
"But if they are overall a net good for those who move there, it is because cities offer more than just jobs. They are transformative" From this line, option B can be inferred.
The entire second paragraph of the passage mentions how multiple people have got jobs in squatter cities. Hence, option C can be inferred.
Option D is not a reason for cities being a good place to live in. Hence, this option cannot be inferred and is the correct answer.
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Question for CAT 2019 Reading Comprehension Questions- 8
Try yourself:We can infer that Calthorpe’s statement “still jars” with most people because most people:
Explanation
"The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements
of lower densities.”
Calthorpe's major contention is that cities are eco-friendly as they consume fewer resources than people living in places that have lower population densities.
Options B, C, D does not directly contradict Calthrope's statement. Hence, they cannot be the reason why the statement that jars with most people.
Option A is directly opposed to Calthrope's viewpoints. Hence, this option is most likely to jar with most people.
Option A the correct answer.
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Question for CAT 2019 Reading Comprehension Questions- 8
Try yourself:Which one of the following statements would undermine the author’s stand regarding the greenness of cities?
Explanation
The rapid spread of diseases in the slum would only affect the people in the slums and not the greenness of the cities. Hence it is incorrect.
Option C is incorrect as the incidence of crime in the West would not impact the greenness of the cities.
Increasing the cost of utilities, in the same way, would not affect the flora of the cities.
An increase in carbon-di-oxide and global warming, however, would contribute greatly to the change in the climate. A change in climate would adversely affect the greenery in the cities. Hence, this would greatly undermine the author's stand that cities are indeed green.
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Question for CAT 2019 Reading Comprehension Questions- 8
Try yourself:In the context of the passage, the author refers to Manaus in order to:
Explanation
The author gives the example of Manaus to show how an entire community of people whose major job was deforestation of the jungle has now been able to prosper by making things such as mobile phones and televisions.
Option A is the correct answer. It is the major reason for the author giving out the example of Manaus.
Options D is incorrect and is not mentioned in the passage.
Options B and C are the pros of being in a squatter city, but it is not the reason why the author gives the example of Manaus.
Option A is the correct answer.
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Question for CAT 2019 Reading Comprehension Questions- 8
Try yourself:According to the passage, squatter cities are environment-friendly for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
Explanation
Option A would help keep squatter cities environment friendly, as recycling material would reduce the amount of non-biodegradable materials present in the environment.
Option B would also help squatter cities be more environment friendly by reducing pollution.
Option D would also help squatter cities be more environment friendly as sorting garbage and treating them would go a long way in preventing soil and water pollution.
Option C is incorrect. This is because keeping the streets clean would mean that the wastes are somewhere dumped in the environment near the local community.
Hence, option C cannot be inferred from the passage and is the correct answer.
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