In a number of European countries large cities grow together to form anconurbation. It is built-up, busy and there seems hardly any space for urban development. Whatcould be done to improve the urban experience? This question resulted in the international CITY aLIVE! competition, organised by the Dutch province of South-Holland. The Dutch cities of Rotterdam and The Hague are growing together to form one large urban area. How do you make such an urban region attractive and recognisable? In January 2003 the two winners of this competition, each won € 20,000 to elaborate on their ideas. These were presented on 16 December 2004.

'Back to the coast' is the message of one of the winners, 'VHP urban planners', a Dutch consultancy that wants toplace the Southern Wing of the Randstad within a bigger context and redefine the role of the delta and the coast in this urban area. By building an artificial new seawall on the front side of the current seawall, space is developed for among other things new public transport. According to VHP the regional city will emphasise differentiation less on district level, but more on a regional level. The various regions will have to be more accessible by means of a large underground network. Then it is possible to develop new residential clusters in areas that are now not suitable for this purpose.

The whole delta metropolis would be a varied network of urban fragments, water and nature. Part of the current area with glasshouses could even be transformed into an area for rice cultivation. VHP does not think that the government should try to steer everything from above. Gijs Wolfs: 'Interventions are the starting point in our concept. Concrete interventions can work as triggers for the intended large-scale quality improvement.' The winning company has made illustrations of how they envision the new seaside city and the new coastline. 'Back to the coast' can be viewed on a special site. (Dutch version also available.)

The second winner is 'One Architecture', also a Dutch company. This company discovered however, that their idea was not suitable anymore. They wanted to decentralise the large flower exhibition Floriade among various locations through which the scenery would be given a green injection on many places. A brilliant idea, according to the jury a year ago, but Matthijs Bouw of One Architecture explained that the Floriade will probably be outrun by time and therefore will lack its basis. Instead of the flower exhibition this winner introduced a (not yet existing) Building Event, an event that will show inspiring buildings on various locations in 2015. The One Architecture report can be found in the Project Synopsis.

More about the CITY aLIVE! competition.