Q6

[pinkdatura]

I incorrectly picked D
Please help me by explaining exactly why E is right? I re-read line 36-45 for many times...still confused, Why there would be increase number of people in stores? Is that because more people will engage in community activity by adopting Duancy's plan? Thx

[aileenann]

So first, I'd say (D) is wrong because I don't see anything about coordinating zoning among these various groups, which automatically makes me suspicious of (D).

Now you might turn around and say the same thing about (E), but I would point you to the text of lines 10-15, where the new urbanists point out that the suburban zoning means that homes are separately built from stores and schools. Presumably if the new urbanists had their way, this wouldn't be the case any long, so the number of these things would go up specifically in these suburban communities since they would no longer be kept actively out.

[canylaw]

Can someone please explain in more detail why answer E is the correct answer?

I eliminated B right way
and so as c
I understand why D is wrong ( after reading the response above)

I am down to A and E.

Thanks!!!

[giladedelman]

So this is one where I didn't love the right answer at first, but I was still confident because I was able to eliminate the four wrong ones right away. Wrong to right, baby!

(A) is out because the passage never suggests that we will eventually have zero need for zoning laws to regulate traffic. The passage just thinks the results of current laws are unfortunate.

(B) is totally out of scope -- two or more apartments???

(C) is the opposite of what the passage says -- the authors complain that suburban sprawl leads to too much time spent traveling to different areas.

(D) is out because, like Aileen said, there's no mention of coordination between different governments.

So that leaves us with (E), which says there would be more grocery stores and schools per person in these suburban communities. Well, at first I wasn't sure about the "per capita" part, but then I realized that if we combine the lines Aileen points out about how businesses and schools are separated from residential areas with the lines about "a 'gratifying public realm' that includes narrow, tree-lined streets, parks, corner grocery stores, cafes, small neighborhood schools, all within walking distance," then we can infer that there would be more schools and stores, etc., in the suburban communities under this plan.

Make sense?

[lindazsun]

What I don't understand with Answer E is that the passage uses "community" to describe an area that includes housing, businesses, and schools. The way that is it now though, those entities are kept separately within the community. The New Urbanists propose for house/business/schools to be integrated and not each in their separate area. So this wouldn't imply that the per capita number of stores and schools increased, but just that their distribution is different. Am I thinking of this incorrectly?

[jsdulberg]

So this is one where I didn't love the right answer at first, but I was still confident because I was able to eliminate the four wrong ones right away. Wrong to right, baby!

(A) is out because the passage never suggests that we will eventually have zero need for zoning laws to regulate traffic. The passage just thinks the results of current laws are unfortunate.

(B) is totally out of scope -- two or more apartments???

(C) is the opposite of what the passage says -- the authors complain that suburban sprawl leads to too much time spent traveling to different areas.

(D) is out because, like Aileen said, there's no mention of coordination between different governments.

So that leaves us with (E), which says there would be more grocery stores and schools per person in these suburban communities. Well, at first I wasn't sure about the "per capita" part, but then I realized that if we combine the lines Aileen points out about how businesses and schools are separated from residential areas with the lines about "a 'gratifying public realm' that includes narrow, tree-lined streets, parks, corner grocery stores, cafes, small neighborhood schools, all within walking distance," then we can infer that there would be more schools and stores, etc., in the suburban communities under this plan.

Make sense?

Gilad, thanks for the explanation.

I struggled with this one, as I was down to A and E and felt like there wasn't enough evidence in the passage to make the inference for answer (E). The inference E requires seems to me to embody the kind of unsupported inference that we should be careful to avoid on this section...

All lines 10-15 give us regarding zoning laws is the physical separation between residence and public spaces. I don't see how coupling that with lines 40-43 helps reaching the "per capita" increase. Frustrating question.

[maria487]

I chose A, because I connected lines 9-14 with lines 40-42. The zoning laws are there because there is car traffic, and they result in a separation between communal/residential areas. If then, the city structure is changed so as to accommodate communal + residential areas together, then don't the zoning laws become unnecessary? This passage is associating car traffic with sprawl, so I just assumed that no sprawl means no traffic. Where am I going wrong here?

I eliminated E because grocery stores and schools don't have to go up per capita; we know that in sprawled suburbs, stores and schools are in a separate area, but if they are just moved into the community center as Duany and co envision, then we don't have an increase in their number at all--just a re-location. You would need to assume that these separate areas continue to exist, in addition to the new ones in the community center in order for this answer to be correct.

My mind is making a wrong turn somewhere, I just do not know where exactly that is. What part of my thinking is incorrect?

[ohthatpatrick]

You said:
"so I just assumed that no sprawl means no traffic. Where am I going wrong here?"

That seems like a really extreme idea. Have you ever been to Manhattan? I'm sure you've been to at least some urban city center. There was no traffic?

Be careful with conflating "traffic" (slow, congested roads) with "traffic flow", which is a term that is compatible with roads that are moving smoothly. You can have good or bad traffic flow. So traffic flow does not immediately mean something bad.

It's pretty reasonable to think that any city, no matter how its organized, will have to think about its traffic flow and have at least SOME zoning laws.

When you're doing RC questions that use "inferred / implies / suggests / most likely to agree" in the question stem, the most frequent answer-killer is extreme language.

"Eliminated" is just way too harsh. I see where you're liking the gist of (A). If people didn't leave their housing subdivision as much by car for the sake of grocery / shopping / school, then we probably would change our zoning. But eliminate it?

Wouldn't you still want to make sure, for example, that you weren't going to get a huge traffic jam in the area of the city where the school is? You probably wouldn't want school bus queues in the same zone as shops/markets where people would be driving around looking for parking.

I agree with you that (E) is a tough answer to like. I think the idea here is this:

OLD WAY:
10,000 people, who live in housing communities that don't have stores in them.
There's a bunch of big-box stores / supermarkets in a shopping area.

NEW WAY:
10,000 people who live in a number of self-contained housing communities.
Get rid of those big parking lot / big-box stores.
Put smaller grocery stores / cafes within the each community, within walking distance.

So the increase in per capita isn't so much the "We build a new one but kept the old one" ... it's testing the concept of "Everybody used to DRIVE to big shopping areas in dedicated areas" vs. "Every area has ITS OWN shopping area WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE."

Hope this helps