📅 2026-10-11📊 C2 Proficient📚 10 new words🎧 daily podcast
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cosmopolitan /koz-muh-POL-ih-tun/
adjective
a city or person that feels at home with many different cultures; open and international in character
"London is one of the most cosmopolitan capitals in the world, where more than three hundred languages are spoken."
conurbation /kon-ur-BAY-shun/
noun
a vast urban area formed when several towns grow and merge into one continuous city
"The Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation is home to nearly forty million people."
gentrification /jen-truh-fuh-KAY-shun/
noun
the process in which a run-down area is renovated and becomes expensive, often forcing out its original residents
"Gentrification transformed the old docklands, but the artists who once lived there could no longer afford the rents."
sprawl /SPRAWL/
noun
the uncontrolled spread of a city outward into the surrounding countryside
"Endless urban sprawl has swallowed the farmland that once surrounded the city."
palimpsest /PAL-imp-sest/
noun
a place or thing with many layers of history built on top of each other, where the old shows through the new
"Rome is a palimpsest of empires, where a modern cafe might sit above a two-thousand-year-old market hall."
flâneur /flah-NUR/
noun
a person who strolls through city streets with no destination, observing life with calm curiosity
"A true flâneur has no destination; the crowded boulevard itself is the entertainment."
brownfield /BROWN-feeld/
noun
abandoned or former industrial land that is being redeveloped for new uses
"The city turned its old brownfield sites into parks and housing instead of building on green land."
eyesore /EYE-sor/
noun
an ugly building or object that spoils the appearance of a place
"The abandoned tower block was an eyesore until the council demolished it."
liminal /LIM-ih-nul/
adjective
describing an in-between stage of change, when the old is gone but the new has not yet arrived
"Airports feel liminal: you have left one life behind but have not yet arrived in the next."
megalopolis /meg-uh-LOP-uh-lis/
noun
an enormous urban region formed by several big cities merging into one continuous area
"The Bos-Wash megalopolis stretches from Boston to Washington in one continuous band of cities."
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The third conditional imagines a different past: **if + past perfect** in the condition, **would have + past participle** in the result. *If I'd known you had a problem, I would have helped you.* It answers the question: how could things have been different?
Remember that **'d** is ambiguous. In the if-clause it means **had** (*If I'd seen the sprawl* = If I had seen), but in the main clause it means **would** (*I'd have turned back* = I would have turned back). Confusing them is the classic C2 slip.
For a less certain result, replace **would have** with **might have** or **could have**. *If
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