The Irish Times

There is something about a boom that separates it from all other states of urban life - something difficult to identify when it is present, but all too obvious when it is gone. Today, Dublin is definitely experiencing a boom. The city is feverish and overcrowded, its traffic caught up in that terminal overlap between the last months of private car anarchy and the draconian counter-attack of the bus and cycle lanes. Meanwhile the skyline is punctuated by tower cranes more than ever before in the city's history.

To an English visitor, Dublin is repeating, on a larger scale relative to its smaller size, the experience of London during the Thatcher years, when the promised deregulation of the financial services sector triggered a massive building boom. To anyone who remembers London in the mid-1980s, the similarity is uncanny.

There is the same sense of a city possessed by tremendous economic forces. The rules and regulations drawn up for the measured control of development in quieter times can no longer be made to fit. The forces of movement have seized the initiative and, on every side, there are indications that it is not time to pause, but rather to spring onto the back of the Celtic Tiger and ride, ride, ride.