The key here is parallelism. Cities are "stressing" and "investing". So eliminate C, D and E.
"Greater economic development" is better than "greater development economically". Greater is an adjective here. Eliminate B.

Answer is A

I think "a means to" in this case is similar to "a way to", so the correct answer is saying that cities are stressing the arts as a way to achieve greater economic development.

I believe that saying "a means of" is like saying "a way of". For example, while you wouldn't write "cars are a way of transport" you can say "cars are a means of transport".

I am sure there is a better explanation for this, I quickly googled it and couldn't find one, can anyone else offer a better explanation?

(A)

(A) to greater economic development and investing
(B) to greater development economically and investing
(C) of greater economic development and invest
(D) of greater development economically and invest
(E) for greater economic development and the investment of
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Raptor

Chose C but A makes sense for parallelism.

A.
More and more in recent years, cities are stressing the arts as a means to greater economic development and investing millions of dollars in cultural activities, despite strained municipal budgets and fading federal support.To greater development economically in B is awkward.

I am not an expert, but "means of" is hardly used.

I picked E. When I read first , I felt as a means for sounds better . I was not aware that as a means to is an idiom.

I decomposed the statement as -

More and more in recent years, cities are stressing the arts as a means for

greater economic development
and
the investment of millions of dollars in cultural activities

,despite strained municipal budgets and fading federal support.

Assuming we do not know the correct idiom,can we solve this just on the basis of parallelism ? Is the parallel structure I have depicted above correct ?

I believe both of them are noun phrases 'greater economic development' and 'the investment of...' or is it that one of them is complex noun and the other simple ?
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~soaringAlone
~Live fast, die young and leave a marketable corpse behind !!

Hi,

I received a PM to clarify if we can solve this problem without the knowledge of correct idiom.

The answer to that question is, Yes. We can arrive at the correct answer choice purely on the basis of parallelism.
Let’s bring the problem and the answer choices here:

More and more in recent years, cities are stressing the arts as a means to greater economic development and investing millions of dollars in cultural activities, despite strained municipal budgets and fading federal support.

Let’s analyze each choice on the basis of parallelism.
(A) to greater economic development and investing: Correct. The two entities in the list are “greater economic development” and “investing millions of dollars in cultural activities”.

(B) to greater development economically and investing: Incorrect. “economically” is not the same as “economic”. “economically” means “inexpensively” whereas “economic” means pertaining to the finance.

(C) of greater economic development and invest: Incorrect. “invest” is a verb that cannot be parallel to “greater economic development”.

(D) of greater development economically and invest: Incorrect. Same errors as in choice C.

(E) for greater economic development and the investment of: Incorrect. Here “greater economic development” and “the investment of millions of dollars in cultural activities” are grammatical parallel as both the entities are noun phrases. However, “investing millions of dollars in cultural activities” is more than “the investment of millions of dollars in cultural activities”.

The confusion between A and E can be further resolved much easily if we know the correct idiom pertaining to the use “means”.

The two correct idioms related to “means of” and “means to”.
“means of” = kind of
“means to” = method to achieve

Per the official sentence, the intended meaning is that “arts” is a method to greater economic development and investing lots of money in cultural activities. On this basis, choice A can be selected easily.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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