Something quite remarkable has been happening to Dublin. Not much more than 10 years ago, the city was down in the dumps, so littered with derelict sites and dilapidated buildings that one former Lord Mayor - Jim Mitchell, TD - was moved to concede that it had "about as much character as a second-rate knacker's yard".
Now read this: "Open-air movies on balmy summer nights, cafe-bars serving the best cappuccino, any number of nightclubs and restaurants catering for almost every taste, 24-hour city-centre convenience stores swarming with late-night `ravers' and an annual festival featuring Mardi Gras-style street theatre and spectacular fireworks displays.
"Put all of this together with a booming economy, the emergence of a confident contemporary architecture and the extraordinary asset of having the youngest population in Europe and what you get is Dublin, one of the most transformed cities anywhere in the world. All that's missing is a Mediterranean climate that would match its mood" - all this according to the latest Insight guidebook.
The whole atmosphere of the city has changed utterly over the past decade - since Frank Feely's historically dubious, but immensely successful "Millennium" in 1988. It isn't just that we've got rid of the coal smog, once so serious that some Dubliners had taken to wearing masks; there is now a conscious realisation on the part of its people that Dublin is a European capital city. Part of the reason for its current success is that Dublin has developed a critical mass in European terms, which is why it has attracted such big players as Intel, Hewlett Packard and IBM. The city manager, John Fitzgerald, who has proved himself a progressive reformer since he took over in 1996, believes Dublin must be "out there competing with Glasgow, Edinburgh and even Vienna".
The city has a palpable buzz about it and this liveliness makes a huge impression on first-time visitors. Tourist numbers have soared over the past five years, putting Dublin in the first rank of European cities for short breaks. Some of this trade - notably the British stag-party groups - has not been to everybody's taste, but there can be no doubt about its contribution to the city's economy.
Dozens of new hotels have materialised, some in the most unlikely places, and others are being built or planned. And they are merely part of the biggest building boom to hit Dublin. The Dublin of the 21st century is taking shape before our eyes.
After years of neglect, the inner city suddenly has a real value. It may be measured, however crudely, by the staggering prices now being paid for sites - up to £10 million an acre in some cases - and by the Department of the Environment's estimate that more than £?.? billion has been invested by the private sector in areas designated for tax incentives since the Urban Renewal Act took effect in 1986.
Mountjoy Square, for example, for long a ruinous spectacle on the way in from Dublin Airport, has been miraculously put back together again. And on the more salubrious southside, Georgian townhouses in and around Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares have been converted back into fine residences by the likes of Edward Haughey, Louise Kennedy and Tony O'Reilly, after years of dead-after-dark office use.
One of the most important new ingredients is the number of people now living in the city centre. Until 1990, incredibly, there was not one private flat available for purchase anywhere in the inner city; they simply didn't exist. Since then, some 10,000 apartments have been installed in new or refurbished buildings dotted around the heart of Dublin, reversing decades of relentless population decline.
Undoubtedly, in the earlier phase of this movement the inner city was used as a laboratory by developers for a variety of hideous experiments: some of what they produced at the time will become the tenements of the 21st century. But standards have improved significantly and even Zoe Developments - the giant in this sector - is now producing some very creditable, architect-designed apartment schemes.
The pace of change is so spectacular that nobody has a handle on it - not Dublin Corporation, not the banks or property developers, not even the Government. Of course, much of the momentum is generated by the current economic boom. But there are those, including the city manager, who are convinced that it is no flash in the pan, that there is something more fundamental going on.
This has to do with the rediscovery - indeed, reclamation - of Dublin by a generation of Irish people, who have travelled widely and even worked in other European cities and have now come home to demand some of the same civilities they experienced elsewhere. They see no reason why Dublin should be less civilised or interesting to live in than, say, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich or Barcelona.
Returned emigrees have been taken aback by Temple Bar, by the profusion of restaurants and cafes throughout the city centre and perhaps even by that gleaming symbol of the "Celtic Tiger" economy, the International Financial Services Centre, now so successful that it generates £400-million-plus a year in revenue for the exchequer. They have also been stunned by Dublin's spiralling house prices. Both the IFSC and Temple Bar were entrusted to single-focus State agencies because of the perceived inadequacy of Dublin Corporation as a facilitator of urban renewal. But under its new leadership, the corporation is now determined to become the key player in guiding the city's development and has already set up dedicated project teams to this end, as well as setting in train a root-and-branch reorganisation.
Fitzgerald's vision is that the corporation, which is Ireland's largest unit of local government, should aim to become "the best local authority in the country". Partly, this is to be achieved by devolving power to area-based management and elected representatives with a visible local presence. It is even possible that Rathmines Town Hall, for example, will be returned to civic use as a district headquarters.
The City Hall, meanwhile, is having its 19th-century partitions removed to restore the interior to the magnificence of 1775, when it was built as the Royal Exchange. It is to remain in use as a base for the reorganised, more policy-focused City Council, with the administration of centralised functions and city-wide departments gathered in the Civic Offices at Wood Quay.
The corporation certainly has ambitious plans - and has found the funding needed to implement them. After years of inertia, the list is almost mind-boggling, from the millennium spire in O'Connell Street to a series of new bridges over the River Liffey, a boardwalk on the river side of the quay wall between O'Connell Bridge and Grattan Bridge and the re-making of key civic spaces such as Smithfield.