Two years ago the city council voted to prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza.

The following appeared as a letter to the editor from the owner of a skate shop in Central Plaza.

“Two years ago the city council voted to prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. They claimed that skateboard users were responsible for litter and vandalism that were keeping other visitors from coming to the plaza. In the past two years, however, there has been only a small increase in the number of visitors to Central Plaza, and litter and vandalism are still problematic. Skateboarding is permitted in Monroe Park, however, and there is no problem with litter or vandalism there. In order to restore Central Plaza to its former glory, then, we recommend that the city lift its prohibition on skateboarding in the plaza.”

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

Citing the letter from the owner of a skate shop in Central Plaza to the editor, he claims that the prohibition on skateboarding in Central plaza should be lifted as there is no litter problem for the other place, Monroe Park, for skateboarding.

Referring to the letter, the author says that there has been only a small rise in the visitor number to Central Plaza, but the litter and vandalism problems are still there. But, there is no evidence from actual data, and readers have no idea about how many visitors increase in the two years. We do not even know the main purpose for those visitors to come to Central Plaza. Are they really come for skateboarding? is it possible that Central Plaza is a historical place and many foreigners love to visit for history? Or the number of travellers increase in these years just because the government held exhibitions in the plaza to attract some people to visit. Without more idea about the background of this place, we cannot realize that the real reason for the small increase in the number of visitors to Central Plaza, so that we cannot figure out the correspondent between litter and skateboarding.

Even if the correlation between litter and doing skateboarding is not significant, it may be also problematic to suggest leasing the prohibition, because the argument rests on the assumption that the travellers attracted by skateboarders do not throw their trash. Nevertheless, most people doing skateboarding are quite young and youngers tend to challenge rules, so the litter may increase again as leasing the ban and attracting more young visitors. Thus, the author should conduct a thorough survey to understand what kind of visitor would be attracted by skateboarding. For example, what kind of backgrounds do they have? Do they have the habit of throwing the litter? If readers have this information, it would be very helpful to make the decision.

The author further indicates that there is no litter and vandalism in Monroe Park, though they can be skateboarding there, so people in Central Plaza should be allowed to do skateboarding. However, the claim seems unwarranted because even if Monroe Park can keep a clean city without any rule on skateboarding, it does not mean that the leasing policy would also be successful in Central Plaza. The assumption that the same behaviour of people at different places are comparable is doubtful. How can we know the difference in people’s habits between the two places? Maybe people to Monroe Park are educated or mutual adults, so they care about their behaviors and never cause environmental pollution. Or probably people who visited Monroe Park are not for skateboarding, and they usually go for having a nice dinner at the famous restaurants there. If the author can provide more details about the travel purposes in the two places, it will be beneficial for readers to judge.

In conclusion, the author should conduct some research, such as questionnaires,  interviews or even reading literature, to answer the above questions and provide more details about those visitors.