Sentence Correction

please help me to clear the usage difference between mean to and mean for

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.
(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

hmm... personally I prefer "means for" to "means to" if its followed by a thing rather than an action

however, I think it has to be A or B for correct parallelism.

Cities are stressing and investing

the wording of B is unnecessarily complicated, so I pick A

is there an OA?

nitin360 wrote:please help me to clear the usage difference between mean to and mean for

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.
(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

IMO E

B, D - development economically - wrong usage.

greater economic development and the investment

economic development - X
the investment - Y

X and Y should be || . In E economic development is a noun and it is || to the investment of.

Hence E. OA pls?

OA is A

4season ....
is logic behind is progressive nature of sentence ....... but i am confused with "means to" or means for construction.... applicability and logic for usage ...

I think "means to" is correct. As they say"___ is a means to an end."

Thus C,D and E are out.

B changes the meaning - development economically is thrifty development.

Thus (A) is the only correct answer.