The Globe and Mail

Talk with anyone with opinions about Toronto's current residential construction boom -- and who hasn't got some? -- and one complaint about the whole zillion-dollar affair comes up again and again: There's not enough beauty. The new condominium towers and townhouses finished or under way downtown and elsewhere are (so grumblers say) either homely or coyote ugly, carelessly plunked into the urban fabric, gussied up with some real estate marketer's idea of Victorian or art deco styling, looming over frightened bungalows, or simply boxy and dead dull. When it descends into just so much lazy-minded griping about Toronto, a little of this negative criticism goes a long way with me. Of course, we have our share of badly designed, badly conceived new residential buildings and complexes. If you've been keeping up with this column, you've read about some of them.