Boy, time sure does melt away when you're writing a daily blog and trying to build buildings. It's hard to believe that it has already been 7-8 years since I was writing incessantly about the merits of Toronto removing the eastern portion of its elevated Gardiner Expressway.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Toronto has an elevated highway that runs along the waterfront. It is old. Pieces sometimes fall off. Lots of water will drip on you. And so remediation works are underway. Several years ago, there was also a great debate that took place in the city about what should happen with its eastern leg. I even spoke at a Jane's Walk where I was, for the most part, not very popular.

The two options under consideration ended up being: 1) remove it and replace it with a grand surface boulevard or 2) remove it and rebuild it with a slightly different alignment. This second option was dubbed the "hybrid" option, but that was mostly political speak so that it sounded like some sort of generous compromise. You can think of it as the more expensive rebuild option.

City Council voted on these two options as one would expect. Councillors in the core of the city did not want an elevated highway running through their neighorhoods, and the Councillors and people in the inner suburbs -- who might use it for commuting -- were by and large more accommodating. Apparently there are somewhere around 15,000 commuters who use it each rush hour.

But here's the thing.

This vote took place in June 2015 and the thing still hasn't yet been rebuilt. So maybe it's not too late! Maybe there's an opportunity to save a few hundred million dollars between us friends. Also, if anyone is interested, I'm still available for controversial Jane's Walk presentations. One new idea I have is an elevated highway that runs through the inner suburbs and connects the best weekend brunch spots.

Back when Toronto was debating the future of the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway, I was an annoying and vocal supporter of tearing it down and replacing it with an at-grade boulevard. I was blogging about it ad nauseam. I participated in Jane's Walks where I spoke about the merits of removal. And I even created a petition that went to City Council the day the decision was being made.

But throughout all of this, I felt like I was in the minority. Most people said I was crazy (though former mayor John Sewell agreed with me). How will people and services get to downtown Toronto? This is critical infrastructure, they said. And indeed, Toronto voted not to remove it.

Whatever you feel was the right decision at the time, that ship has sailed. We tore down a leg of the Gardiner east of the Don River, at that was positive; but the rest of it is either staying intact or being relocated. In both cases, it will be elevated.

But I believe in looking forward, not backwards. And so with that, I think we should be doing everything we can urbanistically to make the Gardiner as nice as it can be. It is for this reason that I think The Bentway is an extraordinarily important project. And it is for this reason that I wish we would light the underside of the Gardiner so that when you're driving on Lake Shore it makes you feel happy.

A good example of this in action is the Yan'an Elevated Highway in Shanghai (greenery, of course, also helps):

Relevant scene from Skyfall (James Bond):

But let me be clear before my inbox lights on fire: I am not suggesting that this is an approach to urbanism that is in any way desirable or worth emulating. I am not advocating for elevated highways running through the middle of dense downtowns and walkable city centers. All I am saying is that if we are stuck with something as dreary and as utilitarian as the Gardiner Expressway, the least we can do is make it kind of cool. And lighting can be a relatively cost effective way of doing that.

This past summer, the Bentway (in collaboration with the City of Toronto, the Waterfront BIA, and the Toronto Downtown West BIA) issued a call for expressions of interest to re-imagine two key intersections under downtown Toronto's elevated Gardiner Expressway. The York Street intersection and the Simcoe Street intersection.

That process has run its course and the following six teams have now been shortlisted:

York Street

• Sans Façon + Zeidler (Calgary/Toronto)

• LeuWebb Projects + DIALOG + Mulvey & Banani Lighting (Toronto)

• 5468796 Architecture Inc. (Winnipeg)

Simcoe Street

• O2 Planning & Design Inc. + Mulvey & Banani Lighting + ENTUITIVE (Calgary/Toronto)

• Daily Tous Les Jours + SvN Architects + Planners + Latéral (Montreal/Toronto)

• SOCA + Tiffany Shaw-Collinge + SHEEEP (Toronto/Edmonton)

The next step in this process is a nine-week design exercise where the above teams will go away and prepare their design concepts. We work with a number of the companies on this shortlist and I am sure that there will be some fantastic ideas that are put forward. After selecting the two winners, the plan is to then start construction in 2022.

The Bentway is doing some fantastic work in reimagining the underside of our downtown highway. This is yet another example of that. For more information about the competition, click here.

Photo by Brian Jones on Unsplash