READERS' TRAVEL AWARDS 2002

Joint winners New York and Sydney may be equal, but they sure are different. Although both cities ended up with the same final score, you thought New York has the edge on culture, but Sydney is cleaner; New York has better nightlife and a wider range of accommodation, but Sydney does better for food/restaurants and user-friendliness. Although Florence won hands down overall for culture (98.43) and aesthetics (99.39), you are more impressed with the hospitality (92.50) and value for money (98.95) in Cape Town and you feel safest in Singapore (97.44).

We know that Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh are culturally superior, Bath is the fairest UK city of all and Liverpool has the friendliest people. We know this because you chose to award those cities top scores for culture, aesthetics and people/hospitality respectively. Edinburgh failed to score top marks for any criteria, but you gave it high enough scores for all of them to ensure it came in as your favourite UK city for the second year running. Elsewhere, you think the cleanest UK city is Cambridge (82.95) and the most user-friendly is Leeds (83.53). London attracted the largest number of nominations, offers the best range of accommodation (87.16) and scored above 90 for aesthetics/architecture and nightlife/ entertainment; you also think it is the least user-friendly (71.88), offers the worst value for money (58.33) and is the dirtiest city in the UK (a shameful 58 for cleanliness).