It's a truly Irish city with a throbbing heart but economic success has given Galway's outskirts a frayed look, writes Frank McDonald.
Galway is the quintessentially Irish city, the only one in the State that was not established by the Vikings. There is something truly indigenous about its character, and it's not just because of all the signs in Irish; even roundabouts on the main roads are named after the city's 14 founding tribes.
They're going to run out of names soon. The Quincentennial Bridge may have been seen in 1984 as marking Galway's outer limit, but now it's an urban roadway carrying some 40,000 vehicles a day as a result of relentless expansion at the city's edges, and plans are being laid for a new Outer Ring Road.
Galway's growth has been so explosive that the planners are still running to catch up. Its population increased by 12 per cent between 1991 and 1996 and by a further 15 per cent between 1996 and 2002 (to 65,774) - largely due to in-migration by people attracted by hi-tech jobs and "quality of life".
And it has so many amenities to offer - a great location on a world-famous bay, with the Clare hills on one side and the Connemara coast on the other; a bustling city centre of quirky medieval streets, good restaurants, theatre, horse-racing and an annual arts festival that beats others hands down.
The city has been enormously successful in economic terms. It has Boston Scientific at Ballybrit industrial estate and Medtronic at Parkmore, which employ 4,000 people between them. And there's a similar number of jobs again in companies supporting the two US multinationals. The other big earner is tourism.
Cutting a fine shape on the edge of Lough Atalia, the Radisson Hotel, by Dublin architects Henry J. Lyons and Partners, has taken on the Great Southern as the main venue for receptions. An even newer hotel, the Fairgreen, shares its forecourt while a 100,000 sq ft mixed use scheme is being built next door.
The controversial re-modelling of Eyre Square by Dublin-based landscape architects Mitchell and Associates will not be finished until next October, at an estimated cost of €9 million; the square's 17th century Browne doorway, salvaged years ago from Abbeygate Street, is now sand-bagged as if under siege.
It has been standing disembodied for so long that An Bord Pleanála decided it should stay there rather than be re-located to the new Civic Museum now under construction next to the famed Spanish Arch. The seated statue of Pádraig Ó Conaire is to be replaced by a reconstituted stone replica.
The original statue, which had its head severed at least once, is now looking rather forlorn in the forecourt of City Hall; it is to be installed in the €8 million museum, which has been designed by the Architectural Service of the Office of Public Works. This once contentious project is due to be finished next April.
Urban renewal has certainly transformed the streets of Galway, with apartments over shops and restaurants where there used to be surface carparks. Much of the running on this front was made by a former planner, John Roche, who coaxed developers like O'Malley Construction to provide the residential space.
More recent schemes include a multi-storey car-park near Ceannt Station, cleverly concealed by a wavy blue glazed curtain-walled building, designed by Galway architects O'Connor, Keogh, Mulcaire; it houses the only Habitat store in the west. Nearby is the new tourist office by leading Galway architects Simon J. Kelly and Partners.
The Wellpark development, overlooking Lough Atalia, will include a five-star hotel - "The G" - as well as a curving glass-fronted multiplex cinema and retail warehousing to the rear, all designed by Dublin-based architects Douglas Wallace. And like the library at GMIT, it is partly clad in patinated copper.
The GMIT (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology) library, designed by Murray O'Laoire Architects, has given the old standard-issue RTC campus a real totem. Its angular, sail-like copper cladding - intended to evoke a Galway Hooker - is the only architectural statement on the city's distributor roads.
There has also been an amazing transformation of Salthill's seafront, fuelled by the seaside resorts tax incentive scheme. A profusion of apartment blocks gives it the air of Torremolinos, at least on a sunny day - though one empty hulk, Bailey Point, is like a scaled-down Ceausescu palace.
A purpose-built guesthouse, scarcely five years old, is to be demolished for another apartment block, most likely to cater for students. But since so many of the apartments are short-term lets, there aren't enough permanent residents to support facilities at street level - coffee bars, restaurants and shops.
One of Galway's finest suburban schemes, Dún na Carraige, lies at the end of Salthill's seafront, beside the golf club. A mix of apartment blocks, duplex units, garden flats and houses in landscaped grounds, this scheme by O'Malley Construction is a textbook example of successful higher density housing.
Further along the coast road, which is choc-a-bloc with traffic at morning peak, the same firm is giving Barna a village-style main street, with apartments above the shop units. This slipped through without any appeal, though objectors did manage to forestall plans to build another apartment block at Barna pier.
On the rising ground above Barna, one-off houses are being plonked indiscriminately in fields still surrounded by dry-stone walls. They extend in an almost unbroken ribbon along a boreen riddled by potholes with a strip of grass in the middle. There are no shops or schools anywhere in the vicinity.
Knocknacarra could do with more shops and schools. Although this sprawling suburb has a population of 12,000-plus - making it the same size as many Irish towns - it has only a small number of neighbourhood shops and one supermarket. Adequate provision of community services has yet to materialise.
Bisected by the bleak Western Distributor Road, Knocknacarra comprises an almost endless series of housing estates, all with Irish names like Binn Bhán, Fána Búrca and Ros Árd. In most cases, it would be half a mile or more to the nearest shop and even further to the school. Lots of driving, in other words.
The local Gaelscoil is clearly over-subscribed. Its main building looks relatively new, but it has already sprouted four pre-fabs to cater for the numbers. A site has been purchased for another primary school off Clybaun Road, but its development is still awaiting approval from the Department of Education.
Knocknacarra does have a hotel, the grim-looking Clybaun, and there is a popular pub nearby, installed recently behind a row of shops. The area also has a library to serve the west side of the city and plans have been lodged for a major shopping centre, with two "anchors", on a site at its eastern extremity.
Houses in Knocknacarra are increasingly being rented out to students and others, their owners having departed to dream homes in the countryside; the Galway Advertiser carries 60 small ads for houses to let in the area every week. Four-storey blocks of flats at the Deane roundabout are also for students.
Small red single-deck buses, operated by City Direct, provide the only public transport service in Knocknacarra. The bus service is less frequent - just one an hour - from Doughiska, a developing area on the east side of the city, and there have been similar delays there in providing other facilities.
Tíruisce, a nicely-designed estate of mixed private housing, is served by a Centra, a Chinese takeaway and a video shop. The nearby estate of social housing, An Sean Bhaile, has no local shops. Bleakly uniform in character and located beside a dual-carriageway, its main landscape feature is a 110kv power line.
Galway City Council has been more successful in developing playgrounds, notably the Children's Millennium Park beside the Cathedral, in line with its declared policy to create a "child-friendly city". There are also plans for a linear park running northwards from Barna Woods, on the city's western outskirts.
The old docks area has been redeveloped, mainly for in-town apartments, though the scale of new buildings could easily have been higher. As the remaining dock-related activities consolidate further east, more land will be freed up for urban development - including the site of Statoil's holding tanks.
The city plan sees this extended harbour area as a major regeneration opportunity, with "great potential for the use of innovative architecture and landmark buildings" to exploit its waterfront setting. Some have even suggested it would be the ideal site for a Galway version of the Sydney Opera House.
Right beside it, some 12 acres of land to the rear of Ceannt Station is also lying idle - even though it is just off Eyre Square. Owned by CÍE, it was identified in the 1999 city plan as having great potential for an extension of the city centre but, five years on, this remains a notion rather than a project.
Not surprisingly, the direction of development has its critics. "It's not just about the bad things that were done, but the brilliant things that could have been done," says Fidelma Mullane, lecturer in geography at NUI Galway, which makes a huge impact on the city, contributing to its legendary "buzz".
Derrick Hambleton, chairman of An Taisce's Galway branch, also wants to see a more sustainable strategy. A taxi driver who knows the city well, his commitment is unwavering. "We're not Luddites. We're in favour of developing Galway - we're just not happy about the way it's going."
Galway does have the highest rate of domestic waste recycling in Ireland, at around 50 per cent, thanks to an initiative spearheaded by John Tierney, the former city manager. Tierney is now the county manager of Fingal; he is to be succeeded by Joe McGrath, director of services with Kerry County Council.
Tomorrow: Limerick