hard · Gre Verbal

Advocates urge the town to convert an abandoned rail corridor into a public greenway, predicting a surge in nearby home values. [[In three comparable towns, home values within a quarter mile of a new greenway rose well above the regional average within five years.]] Skeptics reply that those three towns were already gentrifying rapidly, so their greenways may have ridden a rising market rather than caused it. [[If that is so, then building a greenway in a town with a flat housing market, like ours, would not reliably reproduce the same gains.]] The advocates' confident forecast therefore rests on shakier ground than it first appears. In the argument above, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles? (A) The first is evidence the advocates cite; the second draws out a consequence of the skeptics' objection that weakens that evidence's force. (B) The first is the advocates' overall conclusion about future home values; the second is the skeptics' directly opposing conclusion about that very same forecast. (C) The first is the argument's own main conclusion about home values; the second is evidence the argument then offers in support of it. (D) Both boldface portions are pieces of supporting evidence that the advocates deliberately put forward to bolster their optimistic forecast about rising home values. (E) The first is the skeptics' central objection to the advocates' forecast; the second is the advocates' direct reply offered in defense of that same forecast.

1. The first is evidence the advocates cite; the second draws out a consequence of the skeptics' objection that weakens that evidence's force.
2. The first is the advocates' overall conclusion about future home values; the second is the skeptics' directly opposing conclusion about that very same forecast.
3. The first is the argument's own main conclusion about home values; the second is evidence the argument then offers in support of it.
4. Both boldface portions are pieces of supporting evidence that the advocates deliberately put forward to bolster their optimistic forecast about rising home values.
5. The first is the skeptics' central objection to the advocates' forecast; the second is the advocates' direct reply offered in defense of that same forecast.

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