Recent comprehensive surveys of downtown infrastructure have enabled city planners to ______ patterns of pedestrian movement throughout the district, ...
GMAT Craft and Structure : (Structure) Questions
Recent comprehensive surveys of downtown infrastructure have enabled city planners to ______ patterns of pedestrian movement throughout the district, leading to more effective proposals for improving walkability and public transit access.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
predict
restrict
simulate
identify
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Part A: Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| 'Recent comprehensive surveys of downtown infrastructure have enabled city planners to _______ patterns of pedestrian movement throughout the district,' |
|
| [MISSING WORD] |
|
| 'leading to more effective proposals for improving walkability and public transit access.' |
|
Part B: Provide Passage Architecture & Core Elements
Main Point: Infrastructure surveys have given city planners the ability to work with pedestrian movement patterns, resulting in improved urban planning proposals.
Argument Flow: The sentence establishes a cause-and-effect chain where comprehensive surveys provide data that enables planners to perform some action with pedestrian patterns, which then leads to more effective urban planning proposals.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
This is a fill-in-the-blank question asking us to choose the best logical connector. The answer must create the right relationship between what comes before and after the blank.
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The missing word needs to describe what city planners can do with pedestrian movement patterns using data from infrastructure surveys
- Since surveys collect real data about existing conditions, planners would be able to recognize, discover, or determine what the current patterns are
- This recognition of patterns then enables them to make better proposals
predict
- Predict means to forecast future patterns
- Surveys show what is currently happening, not what will happen in the future
restrict
- Restrict means to limit or constrain patterns
- Surveys provide information; they do not enable limiting pedestrian movement
simulate
- Simulate means to create artificial representations of patterns
- Surveys provide real data about actual patterns, not simulated ones
identify
- Identify means to recognize or determine existing patterns
- Surveys provide data that allows planners to see what pedestrian patterns currently exist
- This perfectly connects survey data to better planning proposals