A great many cities are experiencing difficulties which are nothing new in the history of cities, except in their scale. Some cities have lost their original purpose and have not found new one. And any large or rich city is __1__going to attract poor immigrants, who flood in, filling with hopes of __2__prosperity which are then often disappointing. There are backward towns on the edge of Bombay or Brasilia, just as though there were on the edge of __3__seventeenth-century London or early nineteenth-century Paris. This is new is __4__the scale. Descriptions written by eighteenth-century travelers of the poor of Mexico City, and the enormous contrasts that was to be found there, are very __5__dissimilar to descriptions of Mexico City today—the poor can still be numbered __6__in whole monstrous growth rests on economic prosperity, but behind it lies __7__?two myths; the myth of the city as a promised land, that attracts immigrants __8__
from rural poverty and brings it flooding into city centers, and the myth of the __9__country as a Garden of Eden, which, a few generations late, sends them flood __10__ing out again to the suburbs.
參考答案及解析:
1. 在new one前加a
這裏one指代上下文中的可數名詞purpose，因此該詞前要有限定詞。
2. 將filling改爲filled
在這裏，非謂語動詞fill與句子的`who（poor immigrants）之間是邏輯動賓關係，因此要使用過去分詞來表示被動意義。
3. 去掉though
4. 將this改爲what
根據句子結構，我們可以看出這裏需要一個關係代詞，它既能引導主語從句，同時也可以在從句中作主語，這個關係代詞就是what。如：
What I like in a good author is not what he says，but what he whispers。
5. 將was改爲were
that引導定語從句，其先行詞是descriptions…and the enormous contrasts,因此謂語動詞be要用複數。
6. 將dissimilar 改爲 similar
這裏要表示的是“共同，相似”之處。
7.將lies 改爲lie
behind it lie two myths 是個倒裝句，主語爲two myths，可見謂語動詞要使用複數。
8. 將that改爲which
這裏是一個非限制性定語從句，因此不可用that，而要用which。
9. 將it改爲them
複數名詞immigrants的代詞，所以要用複數形式。
10. 將late改爲later
