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🎁 中英文稿：
These days the worst urban decay is found not in big cities but in small ones
當下，小城市而非大城市的都市衰敗現象最為嚴重
WHEN recession hit Hartlepool in 2008 it hit hard, says Billy Reid, the owner of a local key-cutting and engraving business. His stall in the shopping centre—an ugly grey 1970s box that dominates the centre of the town—sits between gaps where other firms have disappeared. 「We lost the Woolworths, we lost Superdrug. I've got two staff and just this year for the first time I've had to cut their hours,」 he says. Nobody is moving house and nobody has much money—so few people need keys cut or gifts engraved.
2008年的金融危機對哈特爾浦造成了嚴重的影響，Billy Reid，當地一個鑰匙配製和鐫刻店的老闆說，他經營的攤位是個20世紀80年代的小房間，灰色牆壁，實在不怎麼好看，不過那時市中心的房子大抵都是這樣的。當時，周圍別的商店都已關門停業「伍爾沃斯關門了，超級藥房也關門了，我有兩個員工，今年我不得不開始減少他們的工作時間」他說，沒人在搬家，也沒人錢多，所以很少有人需要配鑰匙或給禮物鐫刻。
Britain's economy is finally crawling out of recession. On October 8th the IMF sharply upgraded its growth forecast for 2013. But the recovery is far from evenly spread. In London and the south-east, house prices and employment are soaring. In places such as Hartlepool, a former shipbuilding and steel town in Teesside, on the north-east coast of England, there is precious little sign of improvement. The local unemployment rate is almost twice the national average, at 13%. Last year there was nobody in work in 30% of the town's working-age households.
英國經濟終於慢慢的走出衰退，10月8日，國際貨幣基金組織大大的提高了2013年經濟預期，但是經濟復甦還遠沒有穩健均勻的展開，在倫敦和英國東南部， 房價和就業都在迅猛飆升，在類似於哈特爾浦（位於英國東北海岸的提賽德的一個昔日造船和產鋼的城鎮）的地方，幾乎沒有復甦的跡象。當地失業率高達13%，幾乎是全國水平的兩倍。去年該城鎮30%的適齡工作家庭成員都出於失業狀態。
Partly, this reflects the extraordinary success of London and continuing deindustrialisation in the north of England. Areas such as Teesside have been struggling, on and off, since the first world war. But whereas over the past two decades England's big cities have developed strong service-sector economies, its smaller industrial towns have continued their relative decline. Hartlepool is typical of Britain's rust belt in that it has grown far more slowly than the region it is in. So too is Wolverhampton, a small city west of Birmingham, and Hull, a city in east Yorkshire.
在某種程度上，這反映了倫敦非比尋常的成功和英國北部的不斷擴延的逆城市化現象，像提賽德的區域自一戰以來就經常處在掙扎邊緣， 然而，在過去20年間，強大的服務業經濟在英國大城市蒸蒸日上，而在小城市卻江河日下。。哈特爾浦 就是典型的一個拖後退的城鎮，它比他所在的區域發展速度慢的多， 同樣的還有沃爾夫漢普頓, 伯明翰西部的一個小城市；赫爾，約克郡東部的一個城市。
In Hartlepool, 28% of shops are empty, according to the Local Data Company, a private research firm. Chain stores, widely blamed for destroying high streets in richer bits of Britain, are mostly absent. In nearby Middlesbrough, whole streets of terraced houses are boarded up—the legacy of a failed plan to renew the market by knocking down old houses and building new ones. In Hull, teenagers in baseball caps and tracksuits wander aimlessly.
據一傢俬營調查研究公司「當地數據公司」統計，在哈特爾浦, 28%的商戶都關門了，廣受詬病其佔領了倫敦富有區域高檔街區的連鎖商店也大多被空置了，在附近的Middleborough， 整條街聯立的房子都被空置，這是曾經計畫拆除舊房改建新房以復興市場的計畫失敗的產物。而在Hull, 帶著棒球帽穿著運動杉的青少年到處漫無目的的遊蕩。
