When one considers the city's history as so clearly expressed in the opening lines of Louis McNeice's poem: "Dublin: Viking trading post, Anglo Norman walled town, second city of the British Empire", the logical sequel is to contemplate the legacy we will bestow on future generations.

The zenith of achievement of many of the great European cities such as Rome, Venice and Paris has occurred at times of harmony between public and political objectives. In modern democracies it is clearly a more complex process to achieve such agreement on the collective will. In the area of urban renewa,l public participation systems linked to effective urban renewal enabling agencies, have produced good examples of inner city residential schemes in Berlin, Barcelona and Amsterdam among others.

As we approach the new millennium there appears to be a general consensus emerging that it is important for our capital to be a city of which the nation can be justly proud. By harnessing the economic forces which have begun to redirect themselves towards providing residential accommodation in the city centre, much can be done to remedy the dereliction that has occurred in the past thirty years. However this will require applying the lessons of the best examples from both our own past and mainland Europe's present in terms of successful urban design.

Let us hope that when the social historians analyse the renewal work which occurs in the next twenty five years in Dublin that it will be as successful as that of our Georgian ancestors, as significant to the city as Baron Haussmann in Paris, Schinkel in Berlin, or Cerda in Barcelona, and it can be said that we addressed the challenge with the clarity of vision befitting the capital of a European democracy.