The New York Times

In the mid-1990's, Ireland became the grateful recipient of substantial urban renewal and tourism grants from the European Union, including $25 million to transform Temple Bar into a new cultural quarter for the city. Still, the Irish, known for their fierce, sentimental love of tradition and for their stubborn independence, view the Europeanization of Dublin with a mixture of pride and alarm. Planners were determined not to turn the neighborhood into a EuroDisney of faux- Georgian architecture, but to encourage innovative design.