One way to fix Toronto's poor design

The city needs to appoint an adviser to up its esthetic game

- SHAWN MICALLEF

Toronto is ugly. Toronto doesn't have any good or beautiful architecture. It's poorly designed and badly planned. It's a dump!

None of this is true, of course, but these are common sentiments expressed in a city that grew unexpectedly from a colonial backwater, never supposed to be a great city, into the metropolis it is today. Toronto's infrastructure has always been, perhaps always will be, catching up to the city it has become.

While Toronto does indeed have great and award-winning architecture and is rigorously planned, the "catching up" nature of our civic infrastructure can make it seem otherwise. The lack of one defining look or style can also give the sense the city hasn't any design coher ence.

Toronto is a mishmash of architectural forms. There are the Victorian and Edwardian structures people love, but Toronto has grown well beyond that early layer with many types and eras of buildings. Recent excellent additions to Toronto include the Ace Hotel and the Waterworks complex sitting across from each other on Brant Street. There's also the Fort York Visitor Centre, the new bridges in the Port Lands and many of the new buildings in the Canary District, including affordable housing done to high standards.