I Walked the Streets to Find Out Why Cambridge Is the 'Most Vibrant Place' in England

(All photos by Chris Bethell)

Hot damn, I'm on top of the world. Why? Because after a fortnight of nonstop writing 50-word blurbs about hairdryers and spa days for money-saver deal websites, I've got the day off. And I'm not going to spend it at home staring at the inside of my shed or my musky laptop screen.

No: I crave life, I crave vivacity, and I have just the spot in mind for that. A place that has it all: England's newly-crowned 'most vibrant place', Cambridge. Before you say anything, there's no use in arguing with that title, because the brain boxes over at accounting organisation Grant Thornton have conducted a study! Looking at very vibrant things like child obesity rates, housing benefit claimant rate and patents granted, they've come up with the Vibrant Economy Index, something that aims to rank the "happiest and healthiest places to live in the UK". And the reason I'm gassed today, is that I'm on a quest to find the root of Cambridge's vibrancy.

Stepping out of the multi-storey car park onto narrow, wet cobbled pathways and streams of pedestrians, I feel the familiarity of the Midland streets I spent my youth drinking warm Fosters' cans on. This dewy-eyed spell is broken when a Big Issue salesman approaches me. "Can I interest you in a magazine, mate?" Slapping my pockets, I hear nothing. "Sorry, man. I've only got my card on me." I say, turning around. Then I feel a tap.

He's pointing at the card machine around his neck, grinning. I am vacationing in the future after all.

But walking through market square milling over £6.50 orange juice, a Quality Street tub filled with shillings and Nazi memorabilia, it's more of that wistful Empire sentimentality than a crystal ball. Then, a sign of paradise slaps me in the face.

Only in Utopia does a city's public services include a free fun fair.

Only in Utopia are Sainsbury's finest mince pies considered litter.

Only in Utopia can a Picturehouse cinema and Wetherspoons live together in harmony.

Outside of one of those "happy healthy" places the index told me about, I find Selina. She says she doesn't eat at somewhere like Subway. In fact, a lot of her friends share healthy diets, and she has lost "3 kilos" since moving here. Selina considers this lifestyle to be representative of this "multi-cultural city".

I don't really see all of that, though. It looks to me like the foot soldiers of vibrancy are healthy, white men probably named Hugh riding bicycles. Are they as happy as Selina? I put it to an older gent.

Having lived in Cambridge since 1969, Chris describes how it has changed "rapidly" in recent years. I sense a tone of dissent, and ask whether he feels it's for the better. "Personally for me, it's for the worse. Cambridge wasn't designed to be a big city. They're talking about having 600,000 people here by 2030, almost quadruple what is here now. It's too much – it's too successful. Property prices are too high and people can't afford to live here. There's been a massive influx of migrants too." Weird. I thought these underlying currents of despondency and frustration were unique to the industrial North? I didn't expect them to rear their heads in the most vibrant city in the country.

But surely, if this is a place as twisted as the rest of the country, the denizens of Cambridge would lock their bikes up properly the rest of us do?

Curious, I ask Danielle, a girl about to take the risk. She gets off, wincing. "Are you OK?" I ask. "I actually was hit by a car yesterday. I'm in serious pain; it was a hit and run. In Cambridge, I swear they aim for us. But yeah: the reason I don't lock it to anything? I used to, but it was stolen. I left it and a guy picked my £40 lock within minutes. Then about a week after, I saw it down St Andrew's Street. I was lucky, really, as bikes are usually stolen and resold on the black market in Oxford super quick." She stops herself. "Word of advice: if your bike is stolen in Oxford, check Cambridge. If it's stolen in Cambridge, check Oxford."

Not trust, not Utopia but resignation: your bike will be stolen. How could I have missed it? Is this what lies underneath this town? A brain-belt black bike market? I peel back a thin strip of A4 white paper, and see a different Cambridge to the one Grant Norton spoke of in the survey. One of closures. One of fleeting highs and brutal comedowns.

As the day draws to a close, Cambridge's colleges empty. Out of them emerge prospective students fresh from attending interviews, alongside their dads. I follow their subdued marches to pubs.

And I don't know whether it's the weight of their future on these young men's shoulders or the fact they're mirrored by their fathers, faced with the inevitability of what time holds for them and their bodies, but they look worried.

I feel it too: if Cambridge is the future, then it's just a depressed reflection staring back at us.

Then I see a man chuckling.

"I've never seen a face so sad in a place like this!" He points around. "What is wrong? I've come all the way from Brazil to visit. You don't have long here, so enjoy it!" And I don't know whether it's the blue trousers, shaggy hair or poloneck, but stood opposite Jorge – a man with a pure sense of vitality across his face, a man filled with hope – I see a younger Oobah. The Oobah of three hours ago.

Then, I realise it: in searching haplessly for vibrancy in Cambridge, I'd lost sight of it. And it takes sipping away at the final dregs of an afternoon pint and badly speaking Portuguese to find it again. Thank you, Jorge. And thanks for nothing, Cambridge.

@oobahs / @cbethell_photo

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