Bridging gap between function and beauty

Toronto is a city of bridges but you’d hardly know it. Most are boring and unremarkable on top, but often beautiful down below.

- SHAWN MICALLEF

The colourful new bridges in the Port Lands are a sign of how Toronto's bridges have become photographic draws. These structures are anything but boring and unremarkable, writes Shawn Micallef.

Toronto is a kind of “mullet city” in that way. The beauty is the bridge architecture and engineering, but also the setting.

Ravines, along with the rivers and creeks flowing through them, are the landforms many Toronto bridges pass over. Though the ravines are celebrated and beloved now, it says a lot about this city that the roads previous generations built render them nearly invisible, especially in a car.

Similar to the way San Francisco’s street grid largely ignores that city’s hills, making for some famously steep streets, Toronto’s grid relentlessly crosses the ravines. The streets maintain fidelity to the British concession plan laid down long ago, and with only a few exceptions ignore landscape contours.

There are no scenic lookouts by or on the bridges as one might find in a national park. The closest might be the parts of the Prince Edward Viaduct jutting out over the Don Valley they even have old-fashioned viewing binoculars. Otherwise, Toronto built bridges for utility — getting around as directly as possible — rather than for romance.