Note from Storm: When you’ve got one of the world’s most expensive elevated highways blocking redevelopment and revitalization along your waterfront, demolishing it for the sake of the future can be a painful decision. Fixing the damage done by the Gardiner Expressway–Toronto’s badly-planned “mistake on the lake”–is such a decision.
Some would rather see it turned into a “High Line” linear park, a la Manhattan. But that would still leave ugly, dangerous, underused spaces under the structure This article argues for outright demolition. Having done a lot of work in Toronto over the past 15 years, I’ve spent a lot of time on the Gardiner, and on Toronto’s urban waterfront (the world’s largest), so this is an issue I’ve spent no small amount of time contemplating.
From the article: Removing the East Gardiner turning the elevated eastern end into a ground-level boulevard provides biggest payback, says a new study. Torontonians would get more economic benefit from a full tear-down of the elevated east end of the Gardiner Expressway than from the pricier partial removal favoured by many council members, says a draft economic evaluation.