You know a city has achieved world-class status when it has its own shorthand. Seattle need only flash one of several symbols to be internationally recognized: Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon.com, Starbucks. Of course, Seattle is more than the sum of its slick corporate logos. (Though, except for L.A., it's hard to imagine a city with a more Nike-wearing, Starbucks-drinking, SUV-driving citizenry.) It's also a city of disarming optimism-fueled by hot technology and cool culture-and rapidly increasing confidence. A place where gray days far outnumber sunny ones, but sunglasses and sunroofs are big sellers nonetheless. The area's geography matches its expansive mood. Bookend mountain ranges (Olympics on the west, Cascades on the east), the snowy sentinel of Mount Rainier to the south, and waterways (Elliott Bay, Lake Washington, Lake Union, and Lake Sammamish) make an exhilarating outdoor playground. And when the sun does shake its cover, the resulting Technicolor perfection makes it hard not to hum "the bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle" as you run, bike, kayak, sail, windsurf, or skate on your way. The lush Seattle landscape also creates a sense of expectation with something compelling-mountains, skyscrapers, water, floatplanes, boats, bridges-always visible in the near distance. This yin-yang pattern is repeated in the urban grid: historic Pike Place Market on First Avenue gives way to the swanky shopping on Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and Fremont, Capitol Hill, and Belltown each claim a distinctive corner of the Seattle city's hip neighborhood triangle. Seattle's sibling suburbs are a study in divergent personalities: the mini-metropolis glam of Bellevue, corporate sprawl of Redmond, charming waterfront style of Kirkland and Bainbridge Island, and the wanna-be-village quaintness of Issaquah.

And, as it turns out, those once deeply resented newcomers (to avoid drive-by sneers, Californians at one time traded in their license plates faster than their fluorescent wardrobes) have added an edge to the native low-key style. With the swell in Seattle population-and inflated traffic and housing prices-has come a welcome cultural spike, with hip Seattle hotels, restaurants, shops, and nightclubs springing up like so many dot-coms.

Even Seattle longtime architectural conservatism has begun to bend. The newly opened Frank Gehry-designed, Paul Allen-owned Experience Music Project museum threatens to eclipse the adjacent Seattle Space Needle in sheer attitude if not altitude. Its lumpy psychedelic exterior drew mews of dislike, but now the downtown public library has revealed a similarly ambitious blueprint for its new building. And when a city's library is cutting new architectural ground, a corner undeniably has been turned.