The binder, almost a foot thick, sits by outgoing Mayor Manny Diaz's elbow at Miami City Hall. Methodically indexed, it's stuffed with plans, progress reports, charts and conclusions on dozens of quality-of-life initiatives -- a nuts-and-bolts scorecard on his eight years in office.

It's all there, in exhaustive detail: Code enforcement overhauls. Crime reduction. Computer labs at city parks. New sewers and street drains. Rebuilt sidewalks. Even a chicken-busters team.

The mayor who will likely best be remembered -- and in some quarters, reviled -- for presiding over an unprecedented development boom and an ambitious set of grand plans wasn't focused just on the big picture.

``There was not an area of the city that didn't get our attention, and this is something I'm very proud of,'' said Diaz, hauling out the binder during an interview just days before leaving office. ``This was my Bible, and we focused on everything.''

Diaz, who is term-limited, leaves office Wednesday in some respects to a tepid farewell. Public weariness over his big-ticket plans amid a recession loomed large in the landslide election of new mayor Tomás Regalado. The commissioner cast himself as the anti-Diaz, a champion of residents who felt ignored by the mayor.

But admirers believe Diaz will come to be regarded as a transformative mayor who ably channeled the high-rise condo boom to forge a grown-up Miami, bringing vision and basic competence to a city that had become the target of jokes and banana-chucking demonstrators.

``You want to know his legacy? Then look up,'' said historian and activist Marvin Dunn, who started a large food garden in Overtown in part with city support. ``Manny Diaz's low-key and unassuming but tough style is what Miami needed.''

This is a Manny Diaz even his admirers might find hard to recognize -- a sober, patient reformist up to his elbows in the minutiae of turning around a troubled city.

HIS AGENDA

But this side of Diaz may be key to understanding his administration, which was relentless in enacting an agenda of a scope unmatched by any other Miami mayor in decades -- often in the face of fierce criticism.

That crowded list includes a reorganization at City Hall in his first term; coaxing developers to create a new urban neighborhood, Midtown Miami; and the successful, though bitterly debated, push for a new baseball stadium, a new downtown park and museums, and a port tunnel in his second term.

``People are going to remember the man as the architect of modern Miami,'' said Florida International University political science professor Dario Moreno, who has done polling for Diaz but has also been critical of some aspects of his tenure, including a stadium financing plan that relies heavily on public money.

To critics, the mayor's unwillingness to bow to public opposition made him ``Concrete Manny'' or ``Money Diaz'' -- a developers' pet.

Resentment lingers over the forest of condo towers that spread like mushrooms from downtown to the edges of residential neighborhoods.

``They wanted to push this incredible explosion of concrete all over the city,'' said The Roads activist Grace Solares. ``Diaz had a vision of a metropolitan city and he wanted to rush it.''

To which Diaz replies: ``I plead guilty to making Miami a place people want to live in and invest in again.''

Diaz took office in 2001 with a $140 million budget surplus and benefited from a $255 million bond program set up by predecessors.