The key change in the city, obviously enough, is the Temple Bar area, and here the comparison is with London's Covent Garden. Dare I say that I preferred Temple Bar in those ramshackle days, when it had an edgy, slightly dangerous quality? But then, I preferred Covent Garden before it became a tourist honeypot, for exactly the same reason. There is no escaping the fact that in any city, a characterful area close to the centre, colonised by artists and musicians and cheap eating places, is sooner or later going to get overrun. At least in Temple Bar some real attempts have been made to keep a strong element of the community that gave the place its Bohemian feel. And if only Covent Garden had had the equivalent of Group 91, the young architectural confederation that won the competition to replan Temple Bar that year and which has now largely finished its task. There are new buildings of real quality there, stitched into the grain of the area.

Among the best are the film buildings by O'Donnell and Tuomey - the Irish Film Centre, the National Photography Centre, the Gallery of Photography. This is world-class architecture, as is the "Ark" children's cultural centre by Shane O'Toole and Michael Kelly, with its virtuoso Santiago Calatrava opening wall to the outside world. These buildings contrive to be both small-scale and monumental. But the new urban space where they come together - Meeting House Square, planned by Paul Keogh - somehow does not work. I have not seen it with that Calatrava door open and a live performance going on, but when it is shut, the place is dead. It is not where people choose to go, even when images are being projected from the one photography building to the other. On an evening when the rest of the area is heaving with people having a good time, Meeting House Square is all but deserted.

Meeting House Square and its O'Donnell and Tuomey buildings

In contrast Temple Bar Square, the other key new urban space backed with buildings by Grafton Architects, is bustling - despite facing a building site. It may take only a few urbanistic tweaks to put this imbalance right - perhaps the planned new pedestrian bridge over the Liffey by competition-winning architects Howley Harrington will help - but for now, Meeting House Square is Temple Bar's black hole.