The Globe and Mail

Along with Harbourfront, the west-end area known as Humber Bay Shores is the residential development that Toronto architectural pundits like best to beat up on. I joined the gang a few weeks ago, with a Perfect House column denouncing the new tall buildings on the two-kilometre stretch of Etobicoke shoreline between the towers of Palace Pier and Mimico Creek. Many Torontonians will know the place I'm talking about as the Etobicoke motel strip. Until just a few years ago, when the bulldozers moved in and redevelopment began, the strip was famous for its run-down, art deco motels, located just south of the Queen Elizabeth Way. It had a well-earned reputation for quickie prostitution, drug dealing, and just about every other kind of criminal goings-on you can name.