When Stanley Park first opened, it was the largest, most heavily used public park in town. It is still the largest park, but it is no longer heavily used. Video cameras mounted in the park's parking lots last month revealed the park's drop in popularity: the recordings showed an average of only 50 cars per day. In contrast, tiny Carlton Park in the heart of the business district is visited by more than 150 people on a typical weekday. An obvious difference is that Carlton Park, unlike Stanley Park, provides ample seating. Thus, if Stanley Park is ever to be as popular with our citizens as Carlton Park, the town will obviously need to provide more benches, thereby converting some of the unused open areas into spaces suitable for socializing.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

My response (including the grammatical and spelling mistakes):

The author is concerned over the drop in popularity of Stanley Park. He states that the drop is evident from the number of cars in the parking space. He also suggests that in order to increase the popularity of Stanley Park, the authorities must provide more benches in the unused space so that people can socialize. The author's argument has a lot of assumptions that may not be cogent enough to pursuade the authorities to build new benches in Stanley Park. We will look at three such assumptions and evaluate their effects on the conclusion of the argument.

The authors assumes that most of the people visiting Stanley Park use cars to get to the park. This may not be necessarily true. Most of the people who visit park are likely health conscious and thus, may prefer to walk to the park instead of using a car. Since the video cameras are placed in the parking lot, we may not be able to accurately enumerate the number of park visitors. If this is true, the author's argument that Stanley Park is losing popularity is seriously weakened. In order to make a more compelling case, the author needs to provide the actual number of park vistiors- including those who don't use a car.

The second unstated assumption in the argument is that the author believes increasing the number of benches in the park will attract more visitors. The argument does not consider the possibility that Stanley Park may be far away from the residential areas of the town and thus, people may not visit the park even if the number of benches is raised. Contrary to that, Carlton Park is located in the heart of business district and may be more polular than the Stanley Park. The author fails to provide the major demographics of people who visit these parks. It is possible that majority of the visitors to Carlton Park are senior citizens and hence, the higher number of bences is justified. If the majority of visitors to Stanley Park are children, the increased number of benches will not affect the popularity of the park. If this is true, the argument does not hold any merit.

Finally, the author in his argument, implies that both the parks have the same facilities. It is possible that until Carlton Park was opened, people had very little choice in terms of the parks that they could visit. Maybe Carlton Park has superior facilities that attract more people across the town. In order to form a strong conclusion, the author needs to compare the positives and the negatives of each park, otherwise, the argument does not hold any water.

The argument makes a series of unstated assumptions that seriously undermine it's validity. Unless these assumptions are addressed, the author's argument to increase Stanley Park's popularity will fall apart.