European Prize for Urban Public Space 2012

With ideas of equality, plurality and progress constituting part of its very foundations, the European city is today facing new challenges arising from its exponential growth and increasing social and cultural complexity. Some of society's main problems are radically expressed in the city's public spaces. Segregation, rampant construction, homogenization and privatization of urban space are some of the phenomena that are putting into jeopardy the ideal of the open, plural and democratic community that has always been so distinctive of the European city.

The European Prize for Urban Public Space is a biennial competition that aims to recognize and encourage the creation, recovery and improvement of public space in the understanding that the state of public space is a clear indicator of the civic and collective health of our cities.

The prize-winning works, the finalists and a selection made by the Jury will be published in the European Archive of Urban Public Space, which brings together and makes available to the public the best projects that have been presented in the competition since its inception.

Works that have created recovered or improved public space within the geographic limits of the Council of Europe in the years 2010 and 2011 may present for the Prize. These entries must be presented by the authors or the institutions that have sponsored the public space project.

Given that some urban public space interventions are of very long duration, any project that has not been completely finalized in the time period of 2010-2011 may still present for the Prize if enough phases of the envisaged end result have been completed to enable evaluation of the eventual repercussions of the intervention as a whole within its urban setting.

Anyone wishing to present for the Prize must complete and submit, within the established time limit, all the documentation stipulated in the Rules.

The criteria that will govern selection of the prize-winning projects from among those that are presented for the European Prize for Urban Public Space will not only be related with the quality of the work from a strictly architectural point of view since the jury will also consider other aspects in its evaluation of the effects of the urban transformation that has taken place in the specific setting and its impact on collective life:

- The explicitly urban nature of the intervention. The size of the city or town is not a limiting factor although priority will be given to medium-sized or large municipalities and those with a more general urban significance.
- The public ownership and/or clearly public-spirited vocation of the project.
- Appropriateness of interventions to the functions required of public space, from those directly linked with citizens' occupation of a space, through to those pertaining to the collective imaginary.
- Capacity of the interventions to reduce social fractures within the city and eliminate physical and/or symbolic barriers in order to enhance quality of life for the inhabitants.
- Contribution of the projects in the domain of environmental improvement, in promoting public transport and innovation in the treatment of public installations, energy resources and urban waste.
- The degree of citizen participation and engagement in the conception, production and/or subsequent maintenance of the space. Degree of acceptance of the project by users.
- Transversal character of the planning concepts and/or objectives that have guided the project (sociology, demography, history, architecture, economy, engineering, landscaping, anthropology).

For further information about registration and prizes: http://www.publicspace.org/en/prize/rules/2012