The following appeared in a recommendation from the planning department of the city of Transopolis.
"Ten years ago, as part of a comprehensive urban renewal program, the city of Transopolis adapted for industrial use a large area of severely substandard housing near the freeway. Subsequently, several factories were constructed there, crime rates in the area declined, and property tax revenues for the entire city increased. To further revitalize the city, we should now take similar action in a declining residential area on the opposite side of the city. Since some houses and apartments in existing nearby neighborhoods are currently unoccupied, alternate housing for those displaced by this action will be readily available."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
While it may be true that increasing industrial in freeway areas will reduce crime rate and increases taxes, this author’s argument does not make a cogent case for doing the same program in the opposite side of the city. It is easy to understand that for constructing factories the existing houses residents should be convinced to move out, but the author needs verifiable evidences to prove his/her claim.
First of all, the author assumes that there is a relationship between growing industrial building near freeway and reducing in crimes; however, the author does not prove this correlation. Declined crime rates could be due to police force that can be totally unrelated to the author proposal. Also, increased tax revenues might be due to other factors like tourists. So, the author needs to consider other factors that can affect the crime percentage and tax profits.
Additionally, people might not agree to relocate their houses and apartments in near neighborhood which can cause problems with an urban renewal program. For example, there can be different views, different housing structure, different crime rate, and also different traffic in near neighborhood. Even if all of these factors were same for near region, people still might not agree for relocation. To strengthen his/her argument, the author should take a survey form resident because they might not willing to relocate.
Last but not least, the author compares two different sides of the city in two different times which is not approvable. An urban renewal program happened ten years ago when much more factories were required. But, today with much more technologies, on the opposite side of the city, most of the industries are already exist. Thus, the freeway side areas might not be needed for those buildings. Also, the crime frequency in two different sides of the city might not be the same.
The author can make his/her claims persuasive when he/she gathers information about correlation between crime rate, tax, and reducing housing in freeway areas, people’s desire for repositioning their houses, and also similarities and differences between two side of the city from last ten years to now. After answering these questions, the author can make such a conclusion.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 368 350
No. of Characters: 1837 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.38 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.992 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.551 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 121 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.647 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.604 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.356 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.356 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, so, still, then, thus, while, for example, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1899.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 364.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.21703296703 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.36792674256 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64713590945 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.521978021978 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 582.3 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.9329996786 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.705882353 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.4117647059 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.35294117647 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.111965616344 0.218282227539 51% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0413512464368 0.0743258471296 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0437517595608 0.0701772020484 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0702810856651 0.128457276422 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0425986895983 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.