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The European City of the Year Award

Berlin (winner)

Can you take me to the heart of the city?
Ah, I see; the heart is everywhere.
Can you direct me to the main railway station?
Oh: I will recognise it by the beauty and the sound.
I want to experience history and philosophy,
I understand. If I just sit it will come to me.
Could you direct me to an experience that will make me gasp?
Oh: I must wait until nightfall and open my ears and eyes.
Can you tell me what makes the city move and breathe?
Ah, I see; I must stand close to the buildings and hear the bloodbeat.

Amsterdam

City built on water, city built on bikes
Bikes flowing like water crossing the road
When you least expect ‘em!

City built on commerce, city built on art
Bikes rushing like paintings across your eyes
And the water reflects ‘em!

Just walk beside this canal with an ear open for bells
And the constant hum of Amsterdam
Like the sound of the waves in an ear-clamped shell:
Barge-splash, taxi horn, gallery-door-slam.

City built on grids, city built on squares,
Bike as metaphor for the questing mind:
Grab some ideas and pedal ‘em!

Barcelona

Let me stand just here;
I’m framed by the evening light
In El Parc Güell.

The Spanish Village:
Show me how to dance, and then
Repeat it in stone.

City with wet feet,
Walking through the museum
And leaving timeprints.

The five elements:
Air, Earth, Fire, Water
And Barcelona.

If Barcelona
Was the only city left,
It would be enough.

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The Great Town Award

Kilkenny (winner)

In this marble city the fossils sing in the walls.
In the still centre of the comedy festival, a cat smiles.
Why am I happy? Because I missed the last train home!
Wind quintet for four bus queuers and a breeze.
Ancient and modern: baseball cap caught in the river’s light.
Hurling is a kind of opera: discuss. Loudly.
Even the rain wants to make you welcome, tapping your hat.
Sunday morning is the echoing footprint of Saturday night.
We float on beer here, not lost but steering.
Capital of everywhere. Why go anywhere else?

St Andrews

It’s a mixture of sea air, a skyscape
That makes you catch your breath
And those corners, those corners of buildings
That seem to hold history ready
For you to brush against.

It’s a montage of the sound
That thinking makes, and a ballscape
That puts three lost round moons
In the bottom of a hedge. Perfect,
I call it. Sea Air, Skyscape, Ballscape, History Corners.

Winchester

Sunday: I heard the bells of the cathedral and they sang In my heart, in my brain.
Monday: St Swithun winked and let me off forty days of rain.
Tuesday: Sat in the Royal. Laughed. Cried.
Wednesday: Visited the Gardeners’ Question Time Potting Shed. Peeped Inside.
Thursday: Tried to understand the essence of this place of continual renewal and regeneration.
Friday: Decided to stay. Missed the last train at the station.
Saturday: Began to understand that Winchester has no beginning or end.
Sunday: Tear up the diary. Time to spend.

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The Great Neighbourhood Award

Grainger Town, Newcastle (winner)

From a place North of heaven
Richard Grainger looks down
On the rebuilding and remaking of Grainger Town.

From a place North of success
You can see how the future
Has grown from something you could call a mess.

From a place North of heaven
Richard Grainger is smiling
As the streets that he built
Are unwinding and gleaming
And mending and healing
And if history imposes
A dust-laden ceiling
Then Grainger Town’s breaking
It down as it’s growing...

Soho, London

I’m rushing down Beak Street to catch a screening
At the Soho Hotel: I know. I’m lost. You can’t
Get to the Soho Hotel down Beak Street but maybe
Today you can.

I’m dashing through Soho Square to find a voice studio
At the far end of Berwick Street. I know. Lost again.
Except maybe I’m not really lost. Maybe Soho
Moves when you do.

I’m turning and turning in a place
That relocates itself when you’re not looking
That’s gas or liquid, always shapeshifting,
Always pulling itself out of a hat.

I’m standing in a street I’ve never seen before
Because that’s how it is in Soho. Streets move,
Squares circle themselves, and you may as well
Tear up the map!

Temple Bar, Dublin

Consider this: it nearly became a bus station.
This focal point of a vibrant dancing nation
Almost became a place for queueing
And studying timetables on shelters.

But look at it now: the music, the singing,
The way the laughter bounces around the sky
Then comes back on itself and chimes
In the glass of an upheld glass that seems to play
A note that you can only hear on Temple Bar.

And it could all have been so different:
The bus reversing, the passengers standing
And waiting. The fumes. The low hum.

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The Great Street Award

Buchanan Street, Glasgow (winner)

My dad would talk about Buchanan Street,
About the excitement of it, for a small-town lad
From Lanarkshire. ‘It moved like a river’ he said once,
And I’ve never forgotten that.

Well, dad, come and see it now, old warrior,
See how the river runs! Then remember
That old story about if you look at a river one day,
Then look at it tomorrow, it’s not the same river.

You can never see the same river twice, dad.
Buchanan Street flows and changes all the time,
Never the same street twice, always moving,
Always splashing and always returning.

Buchanan Street is a river, Dad. Come and sail.

O'Connell Street, Dublin

Wide street. Wide street, this.
Widest street you’ve walked down today.
Street so unbelievably, astonishingly wide
It takes yesterday and tomorrow in its gargantuan stride.

Widest street in Ireland, this. Wide street.
Wide bridge. Wider than it’s long. So wide
You can keep history and culture deep inside
As you walk and walk and the dance moves your feet.

Wide. Widest street in Ireland. Widest street
In Europe, if not the World. Say ‘I’ll meet
You on O’Connell Street’ and they have to bring a map Or sandwiches as they walk slowly across...

Widest street in Dublin. Widest Street in Ireland.
Widest street in Europe. Widest street in the World.
As O’Connell Street is unrolled and unfurled
I can walk across it to the Moon. And beyond.

Regent Street / Portland Place, London

You walk this dream called Regent Street;
You look at the maps and digest the plans
And you feel that London is somehow completed
By Portland Place and Regent Street.

This street’s an idea moved from paper to stone
To reflected light and wall-wafted sound
And then to a prism of angle and tone:
Portland Place stone, Regent Street stone.

Stroll down this vision of what strolling could be:
A drifting meander to the heart of the city
With senses alive as you hear, smell, touch, see:
A taste of how things could be...

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The Great Place Award

Peace & Winter Gardens, Sheffield (winner)

Like those flowers that seem to shoot up overnight,
Reshaping the landscape, defining the view,
These gardens have grown and enfolded the light
In places that seem like they shout: We are new!

Let’s not forget that this place could have rusted,
Could have laid down and died, turned to the wall
But instead a proud city’s future’s entrusted
To places that bustle from dawnbreak to nightfall;

And places like this are where cities take their time
And edge towards a working definition of sublime...

South Bank, London

As I strolled down by South Bank way
One evening in July
My senses were bathed as the ambience caught
My mind, my ear, my eye;

The lights by the glowing river Thames
The skateboards’ rattling dance,
The buildings waiting to tell me tales
Of promise and romance;

A stroll along the South Bank’s buzz
By the laughter and night-lit faces
Reminds me of the power of stone and water
To combine in mystical places.

Quayside, Newcastle

Pardon ? You what ? I can’t hear you
For the music and the laughter
Loud lights on the water
And the Tyneside sons and daughters
Living for today and hoping for tomorrer
And if you want energy...
You can come here and borrer!

Say again ? Yes, a river runs through it
Like a River of Life if you’ll let me have a cliché
Like a River of words if you’re feeling canny
Like a River of laughter from each nook and cranny
Like the tide’s in and you want to splash in it
And the night’s an adventure and you want to begin it!

Pardon ? You what ? I can’t hear you
For the sound of an enormous ringing Aye!
As life is embraced by the water’s edge
And you feel the Quayside beginning to fly...

For more information about The Urbanism Awards, please contact the Academy on 020 7251 877 or here to email a member of the team

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