Q7

[pinkdatura]

the assumption in paragraph 2
Is it A correct because it is paraphrase of line 20-21 "contain home identical in appearance and price, result in..." people live there don't pay significant less than they afford, so house the same price, the money they afford=income is same?

B inconsistent, if it really does, there would be no segregation at all

CDE irrelevant

[cyruswhittaker]

Q7 is asking for an assumption that the New Urbanists make, and I think the reference you made is the correct one, as it also says "...resulting in a de facto economic segregation of residential neighborhoods." (line 21-23).

In order for such economic segregation to be possible, then choice A would have to be correct. If we negate (A), it will weaken the New Urbanists' claim.

[kdeclark]

Lately I've been having a real problem with LSAC's necessary assumption questions. I think their "necessary" assumptions aren't necessary at all, unless you build in assumptions which are normally out of bounds for other sorts of questions. If there is some system to it, the I don't get it.

Maybe somebody can help me with this one?

So the Urbanists, per lines 21-24, believe that suburbs cause de facto economic segregation. Answer A is the necessary assumption.

Question: Why is it necessary for these Urbanists to assume that, as A says, most of those who buy houses in suburbs don't spend drastically less than they can afford?

I can see why that would be the case if the poorest people could afford to live there, and then the rich people bought below their income level to live there too? That would be just the opposite of what the Urbanists claim, and so, if we assume that, then I agree that A is a necessary assumption.

However, who says we're allowed to assume that? If anything, shouldn't we assume that, as the Urbanists seem to think, the suburbs ain't cheap. Isn't the problem precisely that poor people can't live there too. So, given this fact, what would it look like were we to negate A?

Well, we'd have a situation in which two sorts of people lived in the suburbs: the wealthy, and the very wealthy. The very wealthy would have paid drastically less than they could afford. The wealthy would have paid what they could afford, and no less.

The question is, does this ruin the Urbanists argument about economic segregation. (This is just the "negation test.") I don't see how it could. If the sort of "economic segregation" that concerns the Urbanists is the lack of access wealthy kids have to the very wealthy, then sure. But obviously that is not what they're worried about. They're worried about the poor and the rich (and everyone in between) interacting. I don't see how the wealthy and the very wealthy living together would create the sort of diversity the Urbanists want to create, and thus, destroy their argument. Not, at least, unless you assume that the poor can live in the suburbs too. And that isn't what they suggest at all.

Am I missing something obvious? How should I go about selecting a necessary assumption answer when the assumption just isn't necessary? (This goes for LR questions too.)

Any help would be much appreciated. I keep running into this problem, and it's killing me. I feel like I'm doing all of the nitty-gritty reasoning the LSAT wants me to do, and then it's punishing me for it. Not fair, LSAT! Not fair.

[maryadkins]

In order for such economic segregation to be possible, then choice A would have to be correct. If we negate (A), it will weaken the New Urbanists' claim.

Exactly.

(B) is incorrect because zoning is not mentioned.

(C) is incorrect because it's irrelevant.

(D) same as (C)--health benefits?

(E) is too broad. "People generally?" Perhaps people who live in suburbs, but certainly not people generally.

Question: Why is it necessary for these Urbanists to assume that, as A says, most of those who buy houses in suburbs don't spend drastically less than they can afford?

I'm with you--negating (A) just suggests we're going to have this "mix" of people all well over the poverty threshold, right? But we aren't looking for a general assumption that fits the entire policy argument made by the New Urbanists. We're just looking for AN assumption made by them. Because of the de facto economic segregation claim in lines 21-24, (A) does give us an assumption made by them.

If people live there with different income levels, there isn't economic segregation.

In this case, the necessary assumption question doesn't have to be answered by a necessary assumption for the entire argument made in the passage. And sometimes, you just have to choose the best answer if one doesn't seem 100% necessary--choose the most necessary-seeming one!

[sherminfaith]

But doesn't the phrase "Children growing up in these neighborhoods, whatever their economic circumstances, are certain..." indicate that it doesn't matter what the -actual- wealth of these families are? That this de facto segregation will occur simply as a result of a neighborhood of similarly-priced houses? So by this reasoning even if a handful of people who lived in the sprawling suburbs were much richer than their lifestyle suggests, this de facto segregation will occur.

[shirando21]

I was able to eliminate C,D,E easily,

but I picked B which turned out to be incorrect.

I don't agree that the reason we eliminate B is zoning is not mentioned. Zoning is mention in Line 10 and line54. Although the word "Zoning" does not appear in paragraph 2, the idea of whether to build everything in walking distance or to build homes, stores, business and schools in separate areas is a zoning issue.

there must be some other reason for eliminating B...

anyone?

[crazinessinabox]

(B) appears wrong not because zoning itself isn't mentioned in the passage, but because zoning regulations as a way to promote economic diversity is never discussed, which is what (B) says.

Also, in response to a previous poster asking "But doesn't the phrase "Children growing up in these neighborhoods, whatever their economic circumstances, are certain..." indicate that it doesn't matter what the -actual- wealth of these families are?" I don't think this is what is meant by "whatever their economic circumstances." I think the point is that regardless of whether you're in a neighborhood that is uniformly poor or rich, you lose, because of the de fact economic segregation.

I think (A) is pretty clearly right because if we negate it (they don't assume it), they can no longer conclude that there will be "de facto economic segregation." Sure, it's still possible there will be such segregation in practice, but you can't conclude that "de facto" anymore.

[lugar.choi]

I was able to eliminate C,D,E easily,

but I picked B which turned out to be incorrect.

I don't agree that the reason we eliminate B is zoning is not mentioned. Zoning is mention in Line 10 and line54. Although the word "Zoning" does not appear in paragraph 2, the idea of whether to build everything in walking distance or to build homes, stores, business and schools in separate areas is a zoning issue.

there must be some other reason for eliminating B...

anyone?

(B) is wrong because it is not necessary assumption. Let me expand on that. For this passage, the author is arguing that zoning regulations (or laws) are responsible for dictating the suburban homes, stores...to be built in separate areas (lines 10-13). So for this passage, the zoning regulations caused economically uniform suburbs. Yes, it may be true that different zoning regulations may cause economically uniform suburbs to become diverse (it depends on the specific regulation), but why should we assume that? This assumption has no impact, hence it's wrong.

[maryadkins]

Thanks for that followup.

Indeed, the New Urbanists don't like the zoning regulations. They don't assume that they cause MORE diversity"”there's nowhere we get evidence of that, as noted in a previous post:

(B) appears wrong not because zoning itself isn't mentioned in the passage, but because zoning regulations as a way to promote economic diversity is never discussed, which is what (B) says.

[ttunden]

I must have done this question differently. I classified it as a soft MBT or inference question. I eliminated B-E because there is no support for that in the 2nd paragraph. A you can safely infer due to the statements in the start of the 2nd paragraph.

So what is the correct way to identify this question? inference or necessary assumption? if this is the latter, I would have for sure attacked this question differently and probably would have invested more time & got it wrong.

[ttunden]

I must have done this question differently. I classified it as a soft MBT or inference question. I eliminated B-E because there is no support for that in the 2nd paragraph. A you can safely infer due to the statements in the start of the 2nd paragraph.

So what is the correct way to identify this question? inference or necessary assumption? if this is the latter, I would have for sure attacked this question differently and probably would have invested more time & got it wrong.

just wanted to bump this to seek some closure

thanks!

[lattelover]

I also approached this as an inference question. It is worded as such.

However, because the question is asking us to infer an assumption of the New Urbanist's rationale, it can also be conceived of, and correctly approached as, a Necessary Assumption question.

ttunden, I'm curious to hear how you would have approached this q differently if you framed it as an assumption q rather than an inference q.

[maryadkins]

Thanks for this question.

The question itself is an Inference question. But we're being asked to infer an assumption that the New Urbanists make. What this means is that we have a kind of hybrid process, here.

1) Look for an assumption they make.
2) Use the Inference Question approach to find the answer choice that best matches the assumption we've identified—it may not be perfect, but it should be close.

Does this make sense? Approaching it this way should get us to the correct answer.

[jm.kahn]

Question: Why is it necessary for these Urbanists to assume that, as A says, most of those who buy houses in suburbs don't spend drastically less than they can afford?

I'm with you--negating (A) just suggests we're going to have this "mix" of people all well over the poverty threshold, right? But we aren't looking for a general assumption that fits the entire policy argument made by the New Urbanists. We're just looking for AN assumption made by them. Because of the de facto economic segregation claim in lines 21-24, (A) does give us an assumption made by them.

If people live there with different income levels, there isn't economic segregation.

In this case, the necessary assumption question doesn't have to be answered by a necessary assumption for the entire argument made in the passage. And sometimes, you just have to choose the best answer if one doesn't seem 100% necessary--choose the most necessary-seeming one!

Why in A should one assume that economic segregation can't occur if most people do pay drastically less than they can afford? Can anyone explain?

Even when you have most people buying houses at drastically lower prices than they can afford in suburban housing, you can still all rich people buying houses. That is also economic segregation as now all suburban housing is now occupied by rich people. So it doesn't weaken the argument even though it's a soft necessary assumption question. Seems like it's being assumed that suburban housing always consists of some poor people.