Change direction crossing island city (5)
I believe the answer is:
turin
'city' is the definition.
(Turin is an example)
'change direction crossing island' is the wordplay.
'change direction' becomes 'turn' (I've seen this before).
'crossing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'island' becomes 'i'.
'turn' enclosing 'i' is 'TURIN'.
(Other definitions for turin that I've seen before include "source of many Italian cars" , "City of north Italy" , "Industrial city of Piedmont" , "NW Italian city with famous Shroud" , "I turn to the Italian city" .)