Fiona a is h £t Jo Tomlinson

2 2
Listening for IELTS

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CD2: Tracks 09-11
m ake-up over the last 200 years: co m m un ities became w e a lth ie r, governm ents introduced new laws, 
and em ploym ent o p p o rtu n itie s came and w ent. These fa cto rs affect w here people choose to live 
o r force them to move to som ew here differen t. For exam ple, m ost people th in k th a t the population 
has changed in M anhattan due to the rise of its im portance as a fin a n cia l trade centre, w hich is true
to some extent. But like the E llis Island exam ple, a change in politics, nam ely a change of mayor, 
allowed the city to boom as a fin a n c ia l centre, and th is resulted in d iffe re n t types of people moving 
to the area. Brooklyn is an interesting exam ple, too and w e 'll be looking at it as o u r case study la te r 
in the lecture. W hereas it used to be a pre do m in an tly w orking class area of the city and therefore 
a ttracte d u nskille d m ig ra n t w orkers, nowadays its fam e as a centre fo r up-an d-com ing a rtis ts
and m usicians means it has attracte d a new and m uch m ore diverse population of m iddle class 
residents. Finally, Queens has shown a d ra m a tic change in its population over the last fifty years due 
to the a irp o rts there. This m eans th a t the n um be r of a irlin e sta ff living in the area has d ra m a tica lly 
increased and changed the nature of the local population.
Finally, I'd like to use Brooklyn as a case study of local change. Brooklyn's population has changed 
sig n ifica n tly over the years and th is can m ost easily be seen in its econom ic activity. Tracing the 
B rooklyn ind ustrie s back fro m the c u rre n t fin a n cia l services com panies, to m an ufa ctu rin g in the 
1950s. to sh ip bu ild ing in the 1900s. we can map th is onto average wages and therefore the type 
and class of resident. And th is has affected the population density too w hich has been steadily 
increasing over the past 100 years from 1.5 m illio n in 1900. through to 2 m illio n in the m iddle of the 
tw e n tie th century, to the 2.3 m illio n inh ab itan ts today. In fact Brooklyn is su ffe ring fro m considerable 
overpopulation now. But th is large population increase was due not to em ploym ent but the building 
of the subway w hich linked Brooklyn to o th e r areas of New York. P rio r to th is at the beginning of 
the tw e n tie th century the only wav of tra n s p o rta tio n was the Brooklyn B rid g e . A n othe r fa c to r w hich 
tra d itio n a lly increases the desire fo r the m iddle classes to live in a p a rtic u la r place is the extent and 
type of local heritage, especially fo r those people w ith young children. In Brooklyn th is is evident in the 
increase in population a fte r the co nstructio n of Coney Island. The m odern day eouivalent of th is is the 
restoration of Prospect Park, w hich has brought m ore m iddle incom e fa m ilie s into the a re a .