I really don't buy this. While I feel that the railway corridor is the much bigger barrier than the Gardiner, I still think that this is trying to find an intellectual justification for cheapness and/or lack of ambition.
Elevating the Gardiner to its proper height
Forget burying the infamous roadway. The solution to waterfront woes may lie in celebrating the space beneath
CALVIN BROOK
November 17, 2007
In the spring of 2003, the City of Toronto completed another segment of its annual maintenance regime for the Gardiner Expressway. This portion of the eight-kilometre-long elevated structure, between Jarvis and York Streets, is an anomalous stretch of pure concrete construction, arching with angular origami-like columns up and over Lake Shore Boulevard. With relatively little effort, its simple sculptural elegance suddenly became apparent.
Driving through the arches early in the morning with the easterly sunlight illuminating column rows, it became possible to embrace the space created by the expressway as a welcome element in the city. In contrast, the balance of the Gardiner is somewhat moribund - combining concrete columns with exposed steel rafters that are painted an unfortunate green. It is fascinating to conjure the confluence of design aspiration and bureaucratic culture in the 1950s that permitted that inspired segment to see the light of day, for it is truly artful in the manner that bridge design can occasionally be. Could it be that the expressway could become a great urban space - both in its form and its functional demonstration of a modernist ideal that is even more relevant today?
The Past
City builders love to emulate one another. In the 1950s, when Fred Gardiner bullied the expressway into being - famously demanding that Fort York be relocated so the elevated road could remain straight (he had to bend on that one) - he was emulating the example of American cities flush with cash from the federal highways initiative. Thankfully, Mr. Gardiner's plan for the most part largely avoided the infamy of neighbourhood destruction and social displacement that accompanied Boston's and New York's expressway programs. For the elevated portion, east of Fort York, the route of the new expressway disturbed only the marginal industrial nether land squeezed between Toronto's railway lands and its then-unloved waterfront. The railway was the barrier between the city and the waterfront (and remains so to this day) - placing the expressway in this lacklustre zone may have lacked foresight, but it was logical.
"Riding" the Gardiner in the 1960s was thrilling. The guard rails flanking the roadway integrated a continuous light strip eight kilometres long weaving through the downtown fabric. Driving into Toronto's downtown at night was the quintessential modern experience - a celebration of technology, freedom, speed and contemporary urbanism. Beneath the Gardiner was another story. Simply ignored in civic design consciousness, Lake Shore Boulevard was relegated to an ignoble status as a feeder road linking the city to the Gardiner's ramps.
The Present
The space occupied by Lake Shore Boulevard - the space beneath and beside the expressway - is a waste land of open soil and lacklustre lighting devoid of trees or vegetation. It is a cage of reflected noise and trapped exhaust fumes. The corrosion of the steel and concrete is accelerated by the salt-laden atmosphere generated by cars on Lake Shore Boulevard below. Without a doubt, the pedestrian ambience is hideous.
Herein lies the problem at the heart of the Gardiner debate - the "barrier effect" ascribed to the Gardiner is misplaced. The barrier is a result of long-standing neglect of the space beneath the expressway, a blind spot in our collective understanding of civic space. Yet these conditions are easily fixed, at a fraction of the cost of alternatives such as demolition and replacement with tunnelling or an at-grade roadway.
Today there remains a serious contingent of urbanists in Toronto who believe the Gardiner Expressway should be torn down. The biggest obstacle they face is a simple reality - it works incredibly well. For those travelling above, passing between the city's towers, it remains an efficient transportation solution and a source of unique urban vistas and exhilaration. Remember, the expressway is an eight-kilometre-long bridge elevating 200,000 cars and trucks per day. This allows a freedom of movement at street level which could never be achieved with an at-grade road system. Yes, the expressway could be torn down, but the cost of tunnelling is prohibitive. This leaves us with another option, which would bring those 200,000 vehicles down to the pedestrian level onto a new expanded 10-lane surface road system. Think about crossing that street on your way to the waterfront - the barrier impact would be unprecedented.
The Future
Lurking in the imaginations of city dwellers there is a version of an urban future free of the car. Tearing down the expressway would be a brave message - retribution for the ghastly assault on city air the car has inflicted - and a jump start on the intimate urban ambience we long for.
But my guess is that the car is here to stay. It will be clean, small and very expensive to drive in the city. Another version of the future is that we embrace the Gardiner and treat it as a vast design project - a unique armature linking the city from east to west, creating landmark gateways to the waterfront and downtown. A harbinger of future urban transportation that is green and beautiful - integrating trees and grasses and reeds irrigated from the vast storm water runoff of the elevated tarmac. Why not take the gift of an existing (already paid for) grade-separated system and introduce transit lanes above and bike lanes below? The orphan spaces beneath and beside Lake Shore Boulevard can become useful, active civic places for open-air markets, skateboard parks, and wild landscapes - a welcome piece of informal, happenstance place-making in the midst of the relentless, sterile and utterly predictable public realm that has emerged in the condominium clusters on either side of the expressway.
Instead of emulating once again our American counterparts - like Boston and San Francisco, which have demolished their elevated expressways - perhaps this is a chance for Toronto to embrace its own special condition. A far more interesting future is possible. It requires serious investment, though at a fraction of the cost of alternatives.
It starts with imaging the Gardiner as unfinished business - civic infrastructure that, if approached with imagination, can both heal this neglected seam in the downtown, and create a chain of surprisingly inventive public spaces that attract people and worldwide acclaim.
Calvin Brook is an architect with Brook McIlroy Planning & Urban Design/Pace Architects.
Reprinted with permission from Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies, edited by Michael McClelland and Graeme Stewart, published by Coach House Books.
