In tilt-shift photography – which I've recently become obsessed with – the perspective on an occasionally normal scene is warped slightly. In a good way. Certain elements are in focus, others not, and an entire image is slanted and slightly perverted. Something you think you knew the look of now appears to be totally different. It can throw you a little.

A similar difference in perspective constantly hits me now that I've moved back into Dublin city centre. Every time I've moved to a different place in this city, a different city emerges. From the calm monotony of suburbs, to a busy Muslim neighbourhood, to an old run-down part of town forced into uneasy regeneration, living in various parts of Dublin is like a lucky bag of constant new movements, scenery, people, ideas, places, attitudes and atmospheres. Now I'm at the heart of it on O'Connell Bridge, and with the town playing itself out with almost Sim City-like gusto below me, it's time to reflect on a new Dublin again.

This is the first time I've ever got a truly macro picture of my town. Every time I look out the window a thousand people come into view, going about their daily business, with their arguments and bargaining and rushing and mobile-phone chatting, combing into an ambient hum that seeps through the cracks of single-glazed windows and shutters that really need to be resealed. Dublin is tiny, socially. It's a big village, really, and not a day goes by when you don't bump into people you want to or don't want to. This has its drawbacks. There are constraints around every corner. If you want something to do that doesn't exist, you have to start it yourself. So it either spurns people into creativity or forces people to veg out. There isn't much of a middle ground.

But now, when I look at Dublin from a height, it seems to span greater than ever before. It seems to be a real city, a city that its inhabitants don't really see at ground level because we're too busy bitching about how small it is and how there's nothing to do. But when you go up top, there is a vastness there that I hadn't witnessed before. It has tilted and shifted.

Not that I want to bang on about recessionary times, but plenty of people I know have jumped the boat (or rather, jumped on the boat) to make their lives elsewhere, sick of town, sick of what a lot of people my age see as a claustrophobia that a big village brings. But the economic crisis is a global one, and sometimes, when there's nowhere else to go, it's better to cling on to that familiar life raft than make a solo journey in a stormy ocean.

When a perspective is changed on a city you feel you know so well, it can be quite challenging and confusing. Normally, I think I know Dublin like the back of my hand – it's obvious features along with its secrets – but looking down at O'Connell Street at night, with so many anonymous cars whizzing by and strangers conversing, it's easy to realise that much remains undiscovered, and I've realised, like so many people, that I take the atmosphere of this town for granted.

It is not a mini-London or a wannabe anything. It is not really self-assured or proud or impressed or impressive. It's a weird little thing. Needy, scruffy, pretending to be cool, sometimes not needing to pretend to be cool because it has moments of serious awesomeness. It runs on the energy of a few and the abuse of many, the apathy of plenty and the busyness of most. There is a recklessness to it, a constant weekend, an immaturity coupled with a bizarre wisdom. A downbeat attitude and a hopeful outlook in spite of being told that what is to come is not particularly fun.

I've been so utterly bored of Dublin in the past. But now, I could stare at it for hours.