In Dundee, as late as the mid-1970s, you would still see old women spitting in the street, hawking up from lungs clotted by heavy industry. The city wasn't so much 35 miles away from the civilisation of Edinburgh, as three decades.

Time has moved on and Dundee has tried to catch up. It now boasts a reputation for life sciences, a cutting-edge contemporary arts centre and, bizarrely, the invention of Grand Theft Auto. But it stubbornly retains the feel of a backwater: a strangely charmless, insular, working-class city where one would struggle to find a Starbucks or a good restaurant. Or a citizen taller than 5ft 4in.

The Scots joke about Dundee, saying that only Dundonians would live there. “Dundee?” they say, with incredulity, their voices going up on the last syllable, “Why would anyone want to go to Dundee?” The English would struggle to find it on the map.

But someone, namely Mark Jones, the erudite director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, wants to change all that. His, and Dundee University's proposal, is to build a satellite V&A on the waterfront - a splendid iconic building that they hope, will transform the area.

The Pompidou effect, Mr Jones calls it. It's also been called the Bilbao effect. What Piano and Rogers did with the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Frank Gehry with the Guggenheim Museum - injecting vitality and prosperity into neglected areas - he would like to repeat in a corner of northeast Scotland that has a serious image problem.

We should not scoff too hard. Les Halles was a pretty grotty area until the Pompidou centre was built and is now on the mainstream cultural trail. Bilbao was anything but a tourist attraction until the Guggenheim; now millions trek there.

Much the same happened in Gateshead, another post-industrial relic chiefly famous for Jimmy Five Bellies. A redundant warehouse became the Baltic, the biggest gallery in the world, linked via a bridge to the Sage, Norman Foster's landmark music centre. Lo and behold: Gateshead is a regeneration miracle.

They are working similar magic in the industrial city of Metz, where the architect Shigeru Ban has designed a satellite to the Pompidou centre, due to open this year. What was once just a name on the autoroute signs will possess a 90-minute TGV link to Paris and be a huge cultural draw.

But can it be done in dour old Dundee? Mr Jones likens the £42million plan to sowing creative seed corn. He wants to build on Dundee's strength in design and gaming and grow a whole new cultural quarter, creating 900 jobs. So await the miracle: luxury short breaks in Dundee by 2013. But don't say you weren't warned about the spitting.

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