IELTS cities and housing vocabulary

Cities and housing are a major IELTS theme, especially as more of the world's population lives in urban areas. Writing Task 2 might ask about traffic congestion, the rising cost of housing, or whether people should move from the countryside to the city. Writing Task 1 often shows maps of a town changing over time, which calls for words about buildings, roads and facilities.

This deck gives you vocabulary for places, people and problems. Contrast urban, rural, suburb and suburban, and use town and village for smaller settlements. For homes, learn housing, accommodation, apartment, residential and resident. Accommodation is uncountable in British English: "There is not enough affordable accommodation for students." For local areas, neighbourhood (British spelling), facility and amenity are useful; amenities are the things that make a place pleasant, such as parks and libraries.

Transport and traffic questions need congestion, traffic, transport, transportation, commuter, pedestrian, vehicle and highway. A good sentence might be: "Pedestrian zones in the city centre reduce congestion and make shopping more pleasant." For growth and its problems, use density, overcrowded, crowded, noise and slum.

Map tasks and planning questions benefit from construction, architecture, building, skyscraper, planning, development and landscape. For example: "Between 2000 and 2020, the farmland to the north was replaced by a residential development." These words help you describe change clearly and accurately.

City vocabulary also appears in Listening, especially in map and plan labelling tasks, where you hear a guide describe a campus, a park or a new housing development. Knowing words such as pedestrian, residential and facility in advance makes it much easier to follow the directions and spell the answers correctly.