Cork is taking stock at year's end. The city is booming; everywhere there is renewal and investment and those who have been away for a long time are marvelling at what has been achieved.
The Cork city manager, Mr Jack Higgins, will retire next May after five years in the post, so it seemed appropriate to talk to him about where Cork has come from during the past few years, and where it is heading.
Getting around the city was never easy. The Jack Lynch Tunnel and a necklace of ring roads has improved the situation - more than 25,000 cars which would have had to come into the city each day now skirt around it via the tunnel - but the city still has a chronic traffic problem.
I began by asking Mr Higgins about the "roundabout from hell", as I like to call it. Visitors to Cork heading for the Douglas area and points nearby will probably know the South Link Road which can bring you from the city centre to Douglas in minutes - but not before negotiating the infamous roundabout.
This is the point at which cars converge from all angles in a crazy traffic dance. There are supposed to be lanes, but these also converge, forcing cars into unsafe proximity and regularly, contact.
Mr Higgins has good news - there are plans for a flyover at the roundabout. This should lower temperatures and improve the safety record.
Another of my favourite gripes is that the South Link Road was ever built. It used to be an old railway line - why didn't Cork develop its own DART system? The infrastructure was already there but the planners went the way of the car when a clean, efficient rail service would have been an ideal solution to traffic congestion. However, Mr Higgins was not in charge when this was happening and would rather talk about what happened during his tenure.
Like others before him, he has left a mark on the city. He was born in the shadow of the City Hall building and served there as assistant city manager before moving to Limerick as city manager. There, urban renewal projects, particularly on the quays, were brought to completion under his stewardship.
Something similar is about to happen in Cork. Patrick Street, the very core of Cork city, is to be rejuvenated in a futuristic style while keeping its special character. The streetscape architect Beth Gali has won an international competition and will have a budget of more than £5 million to make it happen. The work will begin next May and will be completed within a year. A rejuvenated Patrick Street will offer a new sense of pride to the people using it.
The old street is much loved by the people of Cork but its character and the possibilities for improvement immediately drew Ms Gali to it. She observed that the street did not hold a straight line - instead there were bends and curves - and believed the potential was there to create something beautiful.
When he received the Freedom of Cork many years ago, the late Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr Cornelius Lucey, made a simple plea. He wanted to see Cork enhanced by a tree-planting programme. He had rightly identified that Cork was practically barren of trees and even offered to make a cash donation if the city acted on his proposal.
Ms Gali specialises in giving cities back to the people and in enhancing them in the process. The city centre will be lined with trees and there will be resurfacing, with granite as the theme stone. There will be a radical approach taken to traffic, loading and unloading, and taxis, and the central island will be removed to create greater space.
There will be bus corridors and better aligned traffic lanes. She promises that the feel will be of a more spacious street with more managed traffic movement and less clutter. There will be new street-lighting too, and a plaza.
All of this is exciting and comes, says Mr Higgins, at the right time, now that all the other infrastructure is in place. Cork, he adds, never had a better opportunity to give the city centre a facelift and do something about the blight of too many cars on the main street.
While all of this is happening. a special forum on homelessness will be sitting, and a crackdown on litter will be taking
place. With new on-the-spot fines of £25 and a maximum fine of £1,500, habitual offenders may finally take notice.
Mr Higgins says there is little value in making the city centre environment more pleasant if the depressing sight of discarded litter continues to mar any progress.
He is determined the fines will be imposed and that real inroads will be made this time.
Fermoy businessman Mr Tom Cavanagh has led an independent anti-litter campaign in an attempt to do his bit. One of the campaign posters carries the statement: "Welcome to Cork, sorry about the litter". Predictably, this had some councillors up in arms and those involved in the campaign were accused almost of treachery.
At least the debate has begun, and not before time.
The new-look Patrick Street will be offset by an upgraded Grand Parade as part of the same streetscape project. There have been urban renewal projects, such as the one on Fenn's Quay, the Vision Centre, at North Main Street, and the new St Finbarr's Bridge, off the Western Road, which will keep more traffic out of the centre.
These are all beacons of hope as Mr Higgins prepares to leave. Could it be that this time next year Cork will be a more beautiful, traffic-calmed city and, dare I say it, a cleaner one?