|
78. Most people would agree that buildings represent a valuable record of any society’s past, but controversy arises when old buildings stand on ground that modern planners feel could be better used for modern purposes.
In your opinion, which is more important — preserving historic buildings or encouraging modern development? Explain your position, using reasons and examples based on your own experiences, observations, or reading.
Whether preserving historic buildings or encouraging modern development is an controversial issue. Different people may have different ideas from various perspective. Some may argue that old buildings stunt the step of the city’s modernization. Citing the fact that old buildings are valuable at recording the past of the society, however, others may contend that we should preserve them as we can. In essence, it is a conflict between culture and economy. Recognizing that a more proper solution to this problem can only be solved by incorporating all relevant respects, I would like to advocate that both preserving historic buildings and developing modern economy are equally important and that we should try to seek balance on these two issues.
On the one hand, historical buildings are part of our culture heritage, and we should try to preserve them as possible as we can. Firstly, historical buildings can mirror the basic living condition at that time. We can imagine what an ancient person’s life is like through the buildings of his or her time. For example, if you are curious about an ancient Chinese emperor’s life, you can go to Beijing where the summer palace and the imperial palace are all preserved perfectly. Through these buildings, the emperor’s real life is closer to us. In addition, valuable historical buildings can also reflect the ideas of that society. Specifically, from the numerous walls that surround the imperial palace, we can see the hierarchy and the authority of the emperor in the feudal society. Moreover, historical buildings have great aesthetic value. They invariably attract a lot of tourist from different country.
On the other hand, we also need modernization because it can generate a lot of practical economic benefits that we need to enjoy our life. As we can see, modernization has already brought about incredible convenience to today’s society. The emergence of internet technology, for instance, has enabled us communicate with each other and obtain vital information as soon as possible. Now internet has become the indispensable part of many people’s life.
One argument may assert that what if the two issues conflict? And how you address the problem? My point is that when such a controversy arises, we should give our first priority to those old buildings which have real historic value. But virtually, a large proportion of old buildings are of trivial value. Moreover, many of them are essentially duplicates of one another. Therefore, in many occasions we may choose those that are typical of them to preserve while demolish the others when faced with such a dilemma.
To sum up, due to the reasons mentioned above, which sometimes correlate with each other to generate an integral whole and thus more convincing than any single one of them, I contend that we should do our utmost to reconcile the two issues of preserving historic buildings and encouraging modern development.
| 
京公网安备11010202008513号 京ICP证101109号 京ICP备12012021号
发表于 2005-10-20 01:02:00
