Do one or the other in downtown Raleigh to see what I mean.

Stroll down Fayetteville Street or Glenwood Avenue on a warm evening and consider the sights and sounds that weren't there a few years ago.

You wouldn't have seen all the construction cranes scraping the skies or condominium projects sprouting like wildflowers across old parking lots. There wouldn't have been rickshaw cabs ferrying night owls to local hot spots, bicyclists pedaling to art galleries or two dozen places to dine al fresco.

Your greatest challenge wouldn't be deciding which restaurant, bar or club to try next -- The Pit? The Globe? Dos Taquitos Centro? -- but finding more than a few worth trying at all.

On the other hand, you wouldn't be fighting crowds, because downtown Raleigh was largely a ghost town after dark.

"Two years ago, I never went downtown," said Greg Behr, 24, an N.C. State University graduate. He sees the corner of Hargett and Wilmington streets, with its confluence of new galleries (Adam Cave Fine Art) and bars (The Landmark), as Raleigh's budding version of Times Square.

"Now I don't want to go anywhere else," Behr said. "It's a real city."

What makes the activity exciting is its occurrence at low tide, between the big waves that represent the city's commitment to transforming downtown: the reopening of Fayetteville Street to traffic in 2006 and the opening of the new Raleigh Convention and Conference Center this fall.

The once moribund triangle from Glenwood South to the warehouse district to City Market has roared back to life at street level, an urban Lazarus bearing designer cupcakes, fine wines and smart art.

With creative bursts, blanks in the city's color-coded downtown districts are gradually filling up, forming bridges from Moore Square to Fayetteville Street to the Warehouse District, and from the Capital District to Glenwood South by way of Seaboard Avenue activity.

But for all that has been accomplished, plenty remains. The Warehouse District, peppered as it is with underused and empty buildings, is still in the embryonic stage of development. Fayetteville Street has more ground to cover to become the hub that it might, and should, be.

No one knows how this story might end. Ten years from now, when the convention center and the 33-story RBC Plaza are long-standing parts of the cityscape, we might look back on today's downtown as a pitiful shadow of realized splendor. Or we might lament lost opportunities that somehow slipped through our grasp.

But right now, there is only the glorious sense of possibility.

June Guralnick, executive director of Raleigh's Arts Commission, captured it in a recent interview when she described Raleigh as "a city creating itself."

"Raleigh has been a wonderful city to live in, but now it's growing into something magnificent," she said. "There is an incredible energy, a deep sense of moving forward shared by diverse groups of people. It's like we're all on a great ride."

Signs of the surge

This excitement is easy to feel and hard to measure. But I want to point out three of the many signs of this spirit in action.

First is the astounding success of the First Friday Art Walk, when Artspace, commercial galleries and other showcases stay open late, beckoning people to sample the burgeoning art scene.

When the program was launched in 1990, the eight participating galleries attracted a few hardy hipsters. Today, at least 31 galleries take part and claim a couple of thousand visitors of all ages.

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