By English Test Coach · Updated
Task 2 · Three original city questions
IELTS cities and urbanisation essays: turn a broad aim into a specific argument
“Improve city life” is an aim. A developed essay explains whose daily life would change, how a proposal would help and which competing need could limit it. Transport, housing and noise need different arguments even when they concern the same neighbourhood.
These original English Test Coach questions link to complete annotated answers. The situations below are hypothetical teaching examples, not findings about a real city, exam predictions or examiner-scored scripts.
Let the instruction decide what your city essay must do
Free public transport
Some people think public transport should be free in cities to reduce congestion and pollution. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Planning focus: Judge a specific proposal against its intended outcome.
The proposal is free public transport, and the stated aims are reducing congestion and pollution. Explain how removing fares might change travel choices, then decide how far you agree. General praise for buses does not establish that this particular policy achieves those aims.
Opinion essays: choose a position and develop your reasons →
Green space in growing cities
As cities grow, some people believe that new housing is more important than preserving parks and green spaces. Discuss both views and give your opinion.
Planning focus: Develop both land-use priorities and your own view.
Explain why some people prioritise housing and why others want parks preserved. Your opinion should respond to both reasons. Saying that both are important leaves the practical conflict unresolved.
Reducing noise in growing cities
Noise from traffic and construction is increasing in many cities. What problems can this cause, and what measures could local authorities take to reduce it?
Planning focus: Explain problems, then match measures to them.
This question asks what problems noise causes and what local authorities could do. A long explanation of why cities are noisy would answer a different question. Name the affected activity and connect each measure to a particular source or time.
Problems, causes and solutions: match the response to the question →
Use an opinion structure for the transport proposal, a discussion structure for housing versus parks, and a problem–response structure for noise. A memorised introduction about the advantages and disadvantages of urbanisation would not answer all three.
More bus journeys do not necessarily mean fewer car journeys
Start with the outcome named in the prompt. If an existing passenger makes the same journey without paying, that passenger benefits financially, but no car trip has necessarily been replaced. If someone switches from driving to the bus, the argument about reducing road traffic has a clearer connection. Both changes could be valuable; they support different claims.
An original revision of a transport argument
Before: “Free buses would attract more passengers, so traffic congestion would disappear.”
Developed: “Removing fares could persuade some drivers to use the bus, but only if it offers a workable alternative for their journey. Consider a parent who needs to reach a school and then a workplace. A direct connection between those destinations could make the service useful; a free route that requires two long transfers may still leave driving more practical. Fare policy should therefore be considered alongside route coverage, rather than treated as a guarantee that car use will fall.”
The revision names the people whose behaviour matters, shows a decision they face and qualifies the result. It does not invent a percentage reduction or assume that every new passenger previously drove.
Make the objection affect your position
A plan might acknowledge the cost of replacing fare income, then still support free travel because access is the priority. Another might favour targeted discounts and better service coverage. Either can be a clear position if the body explains why that priority outweighs the objection. Simply listing a cost and ending with “public transport is good” does not complete the judgement.
Compare the full transport answer, which uses an early-shift journey to develop a qualified disagreement. Its position is one defensible response to the practice question, not the only acceptable view.
Resolve a housing–park trade-off with a usable decision
In a hypothetical neighbourhood, one plot contains a busy public park and another contains an unused warehouse near a station. A claim that “cities need a balance” gives no reason to choose where homes should go. Develop each view before proposing how to act.
Explain the housing priority
Imagine households needing homes close to work and existing services. Supporters of development could argue that refusing every local site leaves those households with fewer workable options. To develop that reason, explain how a suitable site could provide homes and connect residents to the services they use.
Do not assume that any building project is affordable or meets the relevant need. State the condition your proposal depends on, such as the type of housing provided and whether the site can support it.
Explain the preservation priority
Imagine residents in flats who use the park for free outdoor recreation. Replacing it with planting that cannot be entered would not preserve the same use, even if the new development looks green. This gives the preservation argument a specific focus: practical public access.
Location matters to the example. A replacement space far from those residents may not serve the same daily purpose. Explain the lost use instead of relying only on the phrase “green spaces are essential”.
Turn “balance” into a qualified proposal
One possible view is to investigate reusing the warehouse site while retaining the functioning park. The reasoning is that housing could be added without removing the outdoor space described in the example. This is conditional on the warehouse site being suitable; an unused building is not automatically ready for conversion.
That proposal still needs both body arguments. It cannot replace the discussion with a list of planning ideas. Read the complete housing-and-green-space essay to see how the conclusion responds to reasons developed on both sides.
Connect a noise measure to the problem you explained
Suppose the problem paragraph describes routine drilling beside homes late at night. A response about making all transport free does not address that source or timing. Choose a measure that changes the situation you described.
- Source and time: routine construction work continues late in the evening.
- Affected activity: nearby residents cannot rest undisturbed in the example.
- Proposed response: the local authority could limit the hours of the loudest routine work and provide a clear route for reporting repeated breaches.
- Operational limit: the proposal needs a way to handle genuine emergency repairs, so it should not be described as a ban on every night-time activity.
These are features of a hypothetical proposal, not a statement of current law. A useful essay explains why its response fits the problem; it does not need invented legal limits, medical statistics or an assertion that every sound can be eliminated.
If your problem instead concerns daytime traffic beside a study space, develop a response relevant to that traffic or exposure. Changing the topic from construction to roads halfway through the explanation breaks the connection.
Choose city vocabulary that identifies a decision
- Route coverage
- The places and connections served by a transport network.
Wider route coverage could make the service usable for residents outside the centre.
This concerns where the service goes. Frequency concerns how often it runs.
- Fare income
- Money received from passengers paying to travel.
A free-fare proposal needs to explain how essential services would be funded without fare income.
Income is not the same as profit; operating costs still need consideration.
- Competing land uses
- Different purposes seeking space within the same area.
The essay weighs competing land uses by considering both homes and accessible recreation.
Name the uses and explain the conflict instead of treating every open site as a park.
- Public access
- The ability of members of the public to enter or use a place.
Decorative planting behind a locked boundary does not provide public access to outdoor space.
A place can be visible without being usable by the residents in your example.
- Enforceable restriction
- A limit for which compliance can realistically be checked and breaches addressed.
A proposed working-hours restriction needs a reporting route and a way to respond.
Explain how the measure could operate. The adjective alone does not establish that it will work.
Repair a response aimed at the wrong problem
Try this plan: “Routine drilling beside flats continues late at night and interrupts residents’ rest. The council should put posters in buses encouraging people to travel more.”
Keep the stated problem. Replace the response with a relevant action, explain the connection and include one practical limit before opening the suggestion.
Compare one targeted response
“The council could restrict the loudest routine construction work to specified daytime hours and give residents a clear way to report repeated late working. This would address the timing of the drilling described, rather than an unrelated travel choice. The arrangement would need an exception for genuine emergency repairs and a procedure for checking complaints.”
The proposal matches the source and time, names an actor and explains an operational limit. Its exact hours are left unspecified because the exercise supplies no real local rules. An essay should develop the proposal, not present invented regulations as facts.
- Does the plan answer opinion, discussion or problem–response wording?
- Have you named whose journey, housing need or activity is affected?
- Does the proposed action change the condition you identified?
- Have you distinguished a possible benefit from a guaranteed outcome?
- Does your final judgement respond to the strongest competing need?
Use the problems-and-solutions guide for another matching exercise, or the paragraph-development lesson to practise extending one reason.
Write a city essay with a clear policy argument
Choose one original question, plan the exact response and write at least 250 words in about 40 minutes. Public AI assessment is paused; the free workspace provides a planner, timer and word count without an account. The rule-based demo is not an AI score.